Novartis signs on to support Malaria No More's Power of One campaign to stride towards a future without malaria

BASEL, Switzerland, April 25, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Novartis and Malaria No More, a leading global charity determined to end malaria deaths, announced today that they are joining forces on the Power of One campaign to help close the treatment gap and accelerate progress in the fight against malaria. Over the next three years, Novartis will support the campaign financially and also donate up to three million full courses of its pediatric antimalarial drug to match the treatments donated by the public, doubling the impact of these donations.

"We believe that this innovative campaign will help speed malaria elimination," said Joseph Jimenez, Novartis Chief Executive Officer. "Novartis has been striving towards this goal for more than a decade, and we just reached the milestone of providing 600 million treatments without profit to patients in malaria-endemic countries. No one should die from malaria today."

Malaria is a preventable and treatable disease, yet a child dies from malaria every minute. This is against a backdrop of global funding gaps and concern that the gains made to defeat the disease could be reversed. The Power of One campaign aims to address this need by closing the global treatment gap between now and the end of 2015 through direct donations and existing government commitments.

"The Power of One campaign challenges the global public to help close the global treatment gap for malaria; Every dollar raised will buy and deliver a full course of life-saving child treatment," said Martin Edlund, CEO of Malaria No More. "We are delighted to be partnering with forward-thinking companies like Novartis to help end deaths from this disease—one dollar and one child at a time."

Novartis has joined the Power of One campaign with some of the world's most innovative companies, including Alere who will be providing malaria rapid diagnostic tests, along with Time Warner, Twitter and others. The campaign will use the latest social, mobile, and e-commerce technologies to rally the global public to contribute to the campaign.

"Malaria is a complex issue and needs a multi-pronged collaborative approach. We can't solve a problem like this on our own," said Linus Igwemezie, Head of the Novartis Malaria Initiative. "Through partnerships, with organizations like Malaria No More, we can speed up progress toward the ultimate goal of malaria elimination."

Power of One will officially launch in the fall. Until then and to mark the announcement of this campaign, the first 10,000 people to sign up and register their interest on the Power of One website at www.Po1.org will help provide a treatment to a child with a confirmed case of malaria in Africa.

Novartis reaches 600 million treatment deliveries 
Power of One builds on the Novartis Malaria Initiative's efforts to eliminate malaria. Since 2001, a key focus of the company's commitment has been to supply its artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) to malaria-endemic countries. Novartis is proud to announce today that it has delivered 600 million ACT treatments without profit to the public sector of more than 60 malaria-endemic countries. This includes the provision of more than 150 million treatments of the Novartis antimalarial especially developed for children. Never before have so many treatments been distributed in such a short time frame to assist children suffering from malaria.

The Novartis Malaria Initiative is one of the largest access-to-medicine programs in the healthcare industry. Moving forward, Novartis is committed to malaria elimination by driving the development of the next generation antimalarials, with currently two new classes of anti-malaria drugs in development. The most advanced compound is in Phase II clinical trials.

For more information please visit, www.malaria.novartis.com.

Disclaimer
The foregoing release contains certain forward-looking statements that can be identified by terminology such as "objective," "will," "target," "committed," or similar expressions. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements reflect the current views of the Company regarding future events, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results with Coartem to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Management's expectations could be affected by, among other things, unexpected regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; unexpected clinical trial results, including unexpected new clinical data and unexpected additional analysis of existing clinical data; unexpected pacing of artemisinin resistance; the company's ability to obtain or maintain patent or other proprietary intellectual property protection; competition in general; government, industry and general public pricing pressures; the impact that the foregoing factors could have on the values attributed to the Novartis Group's assets and liabilities as recorded in the Group's consolidated balance sheet, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AG's current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About Novartis
Novartis provides innovative healthcare solutions that address the evolving needs of patients and societies. Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Novartis offers a diversified portfolio to best meet these needs: innovative medicines, eye care, cost-saving generic pharmaceuticals, preventive vaccines and diagnostic tools, over-the-counter and animal health products. Novartis is the only global company with leading positions in these areas. In 2012, the Group achieved net sales of USD 56.7 billion, while R&D throughout the Group amounted to approximately USD 9.3 billion (USD 9.1 billion excluding impairment and amortization charges). Novartis Group companies employ approximately 129,000 full-time-equivalent associates and operate in more than 140 countries around the world. For more information, please visit http://www.novartis.com.

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