Corporate Responsibility

Sandoz’s Position Opposing the Misuse of Our Medicines in the Administration of Capital Punishment

Sandoz’s mission is to discover new ways to improve and extend people’s lives. Our purpose is to contribute to society’s ability to support growing healthcare needs by pioneering novel approaches to help people around the world access high-quality medicine.  While Sandoz takes no position on the death penalty itself, we object to the misuse of any of our products in the administration of capital punishment.  Such misuse is fundamentally contrary to our mission and purpose.

Sandoz sells medicines that have important therapeutic uses, including medicines used in surgical procedures.  Certain of these products have been identified by states for use in capital punishment, including some drugs which have never been used before in connection with lethal injections.  

As a result, Sandoz has implemented distribution controls designed to prohibit the sale of such medicines to prisons and correctional facilities. Specifically, Sandoz has entered into contractual agreements with distributors stipulating that Sandoz medicines are to be sold exclusively to medical users such as hospitals for use consistent with approved product labeling.  In addition, to prevent inappropriate diversion of our products, we have implemented similar contractual restrictions on any entity wishing to purchase such medicines for their own use, e.g., hospital or outpatient clinic.

Sandoz regularly monitors the distribution of our products to ensure compliance with our distribution controls and will take necessary legal action to ensure the proper use of our medicines.

Our corporate responsibility programs are an important part of how we help people around the world access high-quality medicine.

Despite the remarkable medical progress during the last century, there are still at least 400 million people worldwide who lack access to essential health services¹ and more than two billion who cannot afford to buy the medicines they need². A healthy life, unfortunately, is still far from a given for too many. Every year, eight million people die from cancer³ and 14 million new cases are diagnosed⁴. Nearly 10 million people develop tuberculosis (TB) annually, including one million children, and the disease claims 1.5 million victims per year⁵. Nearly half a million people still die of malaria every year⁶.

As a division of the Novartis Group, Sandoz is committed to playing a key role in achieving global healthcare goals, by pioneering new approaches to drive increased access worldwide. Increasing access to medicine is the basis of our day-to-day business model, but we also run a range of targeted corporate responsibility programs to ensure access for those most in need.

On the following pages, we explain more about the work we do on Corporate Responsibility and the programs we run. We focus on addressing specific health needs in underprivileged communities, including non-communicable and infectious diseases, as well as promoting access to medical information and capacity building through our maternal and child health and Breathe Africa programs. More details can be found by clicking on the links below.