I am writing to share an update with the community on our progress to bring all our medicines to patients in need. Through decades of research and investment in scientific innovation, we now have four medicines to treat the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis (CF) for approximately 90% of people living with CF. I am pleased to tell you that today our CF medicines are available in more than 60 countries across six continents treating more than 68,000 people with CF. This represents more than two-thirds of diagnosed people with CF worldwide. And patients in more than 50 countries have formal broad access to our most recently approved medicine less than 5 years following the first approval. We remain committed to continue our efforts to expand rapid and sustainable access to our medicines across countries, age groups and genotypes.
We’re advancing regulatory and reimbursement discussions to expand access globally. Since 2022, we have signed more than 200 reimbursement agreements for our four approved medicines including in Latvia, New Zealand, South Africa and Brazil, with most signed faster than the industry average in the respective country. Our geographic expansion continues in countries where we’ve identified people with CF in need and a potential path to access including active discussions with governments to achieve sustainable reimbursed access in Mexico, Uruguay, Chile, Lithuania, and Turkey.
In countries with a path to sustainable agreements with governments, we have provided medicine free of charge through a compassionate use program for more than 6,600 critically ill people who did not have the option of waiting until formal reimbursement agreements are in place.
We have also initiated a donation pilot program in lower-income countries where economic constraints and/or inadequate healthcare infrastructure make government agreements infeasible or unsustainable. This pilot program currently includes 12 lower-income countries across four continents, and we are in the process of further expanding to additional countries, including India and Pakistan. The current eligible countries are: Egypt, El Salvador, Honduras, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lebanon, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, and Ukraine.
Our goal remains to provide access to our CF medicines to people living with CF who can potentially benefit from them. While we have made remarkable progress, we are not done. We are still investing in innovation with the goal of discovering and developing even better medicines and we continue to advance approaches for the approximately 10% of people with CF who can’t benefit from our existing CF medicines because they don’t produce any cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) protein.
For more information on access facts and figures for CF, please visit www.vrtx.com/medicines/cystic-fibrosis-facts-and-figures.
Without your dedication and involvement, we wouldn’t be where we are today, and we are committed to working alongside the CF community on this journey to transform the lives of people living with CF.