To quickly read our safe harbor statement, the information presented today contains forward-looking statements that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors. These may cause actual results to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. For a description of some of these factors, please refer to the company's Form 20F and its most recent quarterly results on Form 6K that respectively were filed with and furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Now, to officially open our event and set the stage, I'm pleased to hand over to Steffen.
Thank you, Marik. Welcome, and thanks to everyone online for joining us. My name is Steffen Lang, and I'm the President of Operations. We have prepared a full agenda for the next hour. First, we have Lutz Hegemann, who is our President of Global Health. He will cover our progress on our Global Health pipeline, including recent milestones in the fight against malaria. Next, we will share a fireside chat which recently took place between Sujatha Vaidyanathan, our Development Head for Global Health, and Martin Fitchett, the CEO of Medicines for Malaria Venture, a key partner of ours. After that, we will have Korab Zuka, our Global Head of Social Impact and Chief Sustainability Officer, who will cover some of the innovative work we are doing to expand access to innovative medicines to medically underserved populations in high-income countries. Finally, I will cover environmental sustainability and then proceed to a Q&A.
As we get started, I think it's important to anchor in our company strategy. Novartis has evolved from a diversified healthcare conglomerate into a pure-play innovative medicines company. We remain fully committed to executing our focus strategy, and our strategy remains unchanged. We have defined four core therapeutic areas, each with strong signs, clear unmet need, and significant opportunity for growth. We continue to invest in five technology platforms, particularly advanced platforms like radio-ligand therapies, xRNA, and gene and cell therapies, which we believe will shape the future of medicine through 2030 and beyond. Finally, we remain committed to being a truly global leader serving all major markets worldwide while maintaining focus on four key geographies: U.S., China, Germany, and Japan. Our priorities are clear. We aim to accelerate growth and deliver returns by bringing high-value medicines to patients with launch excellence.
At the same time, we are focused on strengthening our foundation, unleashing the power of our people, scaling data science and technology, and building trust with society by driving social impact and sustainability. We have stayed the course on our commitment to social impact and sustainability, and we will continue to do so regardless of external factors. Also, execution remains central. We are delivering through operational excellence, driving efficiency and agile resource allocation, and continuously improving R&D productivity to ensure sustainable growth and impact. On the next slide, please. Our social impact and sustainability efforts directly support our strategy and long-term value creation. We focus on three strategic pillars: Global Health Innovation. We are committed to finding breakthroughs for diseases often neglected by science and ensuring innovative medicines reach communities in low and middle-income countries. This is about expanding access where it's truly needed most. Second, Inclusion and Access.
We embed access principles across the entire research, development, and commercialization continuum, actively working to close equity gaps by reaching underserved populations. Third, Environmental Sustainability. Protecting human health also means protecting planetary health. We have strong environmental commitments to reduce our footprint and preserve resources for future generations. Underpinning these pillars are two foundational topics. First, Ethics, Risk, and Compliance. We maintain the highest standards of ethical behavior and regulatory compliance across the value chain. Second, Culture and People Experience. We are building a workplace where everyone belongs and thrives while preparing our talent for the future and offering fair, competitive rewards. In short, these initiatives are not separate from our business. They're integral to how we deliver sustainable growth and long-term impact for patients, society, and our shareholders.
To dive deeper into our first strategic priority, Global Health and Innovation, I'm pleased to invite Lutz to share more about our Global Health pipeline.
Thank you very much, Steffen. Hello, everyone. I'd like to say a few words about our Global Health Innovation. If we can move to the first slide, please. I would like to highlight that at Novartis here, we use the entire continuum that we have from drug discovery, development, delivery, and of course, also operations in order to support the Global Health pipeline as much as we would use that continuum for any other disease area. Let me highlight that in California, we have a dedicated drug discovery team under the leadership of Thierry Diagana, who specifically focus on infectious diseases, sickle cell disease, and other neglected tropical diseases. The development unit under Sujatha Vaidyanathan, who will be in a fireside chat later in this program. Of course, the operations team essentially produces millions of tablets, particularly for malaria.
Our delivery team, including our dedicated team that we have in Sub-Saharan Africa serving the disease endemic countries, has access during discovery and development to the whole array of different technologies that we would use for any other disease area as well. On the next slide, we see how we are looking at the diseases that we are focusing on in global health. The World Health Organization has a list of diseases that do not have adequate therapies available. We see that about 2 billion people struggle to have even access to basic medicines, and more than 1.5 billion people suffer from neglected tropical diseases. We have seen recently, particularly as a consequence of climate change, a further spread in those diseases and an increase in the disease epidemiology.
Those diseases typically affect underserved patients, patients who are living in countries which are characterized by fragile health systems and where the triple burden of disease is felt particularly hard. By that, I mean that we have an unfinished agenda in infectious diseases. We have a rise in non-communicable or chronic diseases. We often also see epidemics who put an additional burden on those healthcare systems. We decide when there is an unmet need that is acknowledged also externally, for instance, by WHO, and we have the scientific capabilities to address those diseases. That for us is a call to action and a disease area that we would then target. We see that the unmet medical need in those disease areas is quite pronounced. We see either in diseases emerging of resistance.
That is particularly the case for malaria, or we see that toxic or poorly effective treatments are available, as we see for other parasitic diseases like Chagas disease and leishmaniasis, often medicines that were developed 50 or 60 years ago and that do not meet the current standards of quality, efficacy, or tolerability. Or we even have diseases where treatments have never been developed, like dengue fever or some other emerging viral diseases. Typically, those would be the viral diseases where we also see a rise in the epidemiology of those diseases. On the next slide, you see the pipeline that I'm always very proud to talk about because when I started in development more than 12 years ago, this pipeline was essentially empty.
Now, through the great work that our colleagues in drug discovery and development have made, you see that we have quite a number of different disease areas that we tackle and drug candidates that we are advancing through the different phases of development. We are currently running 11 clinical trials, which involve 14 low and middle-income countries. We believe that once we advance this pipeline, we have a very good portfolio of new drug candidates that address those diseases that I spoke about just earlier. The next slide, please. When we now take a deeper look into malaria, which, as you know, has been a focus area for us for many years, currently, artemisinin combination therapy still cures malaria. We should not forget about that because it is still a lifesaving medicine.
We see those early signs that make us worry because those signs have, over the years, always led later to a full-fledged resistance, which then has dire consequences, as we see some estimations here that we will see millions more malaria cases, more hospitalizations, and about 80,000 additional malaria deaths annually. That is what we need to avoid. This has been our focus for the last 10 years, to develop a non-artemisinin combination therapy that addresses the need in malaria even when resistance is on the rise. We see also now the effect of climate change, which will essentially lead to a wider spread of malaria into areas, for instance, like Southern Europe, which have long eliminated malaria. Of course, that will only exacerbate the burden of the disease together with the resistance that we are facing.
On the next slide, we see the different needs that have been highlighted for new antimalarials. I just mentioned the need to address the threat of resistance. Of course, we always strive to also simplify dosing. Current antimalarial therapy is a three-day treatment course with twice-daily dosing. Now, for the new antimalarials, we'll have a daily dosing, but we are trying to further reduce also the treatment duration. One important element is the transmission blocking, whereby we aspire to not only treat the patient but also make sure that the patient cannot transmit the malaria then through the vector to another person, which currently requires a different medicine to be taken on top of the treatment. The idea here would be to find antimalarials that have the ability to also block transmission.
We have two candidates who demonstrate that at least in vivo, and now most recently for ganaplacide. We also need to look beyond falciparum malaria and look at Vivax, which is particularly prevalent in countries that have almost eliminated malaria, where we are developing single-dose exposure radical cure approaches. On the next slide, let me go a little deeper into KLU156, which is our most advanced new antimalarial. We have just published and presented the data of the confirmatory phase three trial at the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene meeting in Toronto. We see in this large trial that the medicine works, and it works remarkably well with a cure rate of close to 100%.
This drug candidate is effective in killing the parasites, even parasites with mutations, but also addresses the gametocytes, which are those stages of the parasite that would then transmit the infection to other patients. We have essentially two benefits here that are being conveyed by this one drug candidate. It should be noted that this was not easy to get to that stage because we screened 2.3 million molecules in our library to find ganaplacide. We also reformulated lumefantrine, which is currently the combination partner in our current artemisinin combination therapy, so that it can be administered only once daily. Next slide, please. In closing, you see the malaria commitment that dates back more than 25 years ago. In 1999, we launched the first fixed-dose artemisinin-based combination therapy. We have now surpassed 1 billion of these treatments globally. We introduced a pediatric formulation, but we continued.
We only this year have a Coartem Baby formulation that was introduced. There was no treatment for newborns and babies up until now. Now we are coming with the next generation of chemical entities of new antimalarials to address resistance and some of the other needs that I had highlighted earlier with future introductions. We will continue to stay our course in malaria. That brings me to the end of my quick overview, and I would now like to invite Sujatha Vaidyanathan, our Development Unit Head for Global Health, and Martin Fitchett, who is the CEO of Medicines for Malaria Venture, and a longstanding collaboration partner, to hold the fireside chat. Thank you.
I'm here with Dr. Martin Fitchett, CEO of Medicines for Malaria Venture, a product development partner in the antimalarial R&D space. Martin has been in the pharmaceutical industry for quite some time, and he's worked here at Novartis. He's covered multiple therapeutic areas with a focus on global health and public health at Johnson & Johnson, where he covered end-to-end focus on R&D and access. Martin, it's really a pleasure to have you here with us.
Thank you very much. It's great to be back in Basel.
Indeed. You were here at Novartis many years ago.
I just walked past my old office.
Excellent. Excellent. We saw you recently in Ghana for the Coartem Baby launch. Quite exciting for us. We had Vas join us as well for the launch. We'd just love to hear your thoughts on just the Coartem Baby formulation, the development, our partnership, and the launch as well.
What an incredible event. Thank you very much for the invitation. It was an honor to be there. This was an extraordinary program, and I think it really illustrates the concept of partnership in global health in getting a very, very difficult job done. There was one evidence gap in malaria, and that was the efficacy and safety of antimalarials in children under 5 kg. It had not been studied. With enormous credit to Novartis, you decided to create the new formulation for this very young and vulnerable age group and study it to prove that it works. Many thought this study in such tiny vulnerable children under 5 kg could not be done. With the partnership with global partners around the world, including doctors, health workers, and families in malaria-impacted regions, we got it done. It was an incredible feeling.
I will never forget the day. I think it was in July when the product was approved, and the announcement came out that this was approved. It took the world by storm. It surprised us all how incredibly welcome this news was. I think in a very difficult world right now, people saw this as a really important story of a company, nonprofits, government, doctors, families, nurses getting together to solve a very difficult problem because the most vulnerable children needed that data, and we needed to understand how to treat them with this new product. It was successful. I would just like to say thank you to Novartis and congratulations for leading that.
It was really a humbling experience to be part of that, to be able to bring that medicine to the most vulnerable patients. It could not have been done without the collaborations and partnerships that you mentioned. Thank you so much.
We're so proud to partner with Novartis, and we look forward to many, many more innovations in the future.
With over 25 years of experience in R&D and global health, what do you see as the most persistent or complex challenge in advancing global health outcomes?
Challenge. Where to start? Perhaps we can talk about malaria as a good example. If we think about malaria, in any one year, a quarter of a billion people are infected. 600,000 people will die in that year, and around 75% of those are children under five. It is a massive public health challenge, catastrophic to families, catastrophic to communities. What to do? Innovation is really the long-term and the only answer to getting ahead of malaria. The reason for this is because it is caused by a parasite. That parasite is very wily and highly adaptable to current treatments, meaning it adapts to become resistant to those treatments. We have to continually think ahead of the parasite.
We have to beat it with urgency, with new medicines that have a high barrier of resistance, new mechanisms of action that can be used to treat the malaria parasite even as it adapts. We have to think about eliminating the disease. So many challenges. The only way to do this is innovation. The core of that, of that innovation, is innovation of pharmaceuticals, medicinal R&D. Now, you and I know, I'm ex-Novartis. We've both worked in this area for many years. R&D for medicines is extraordinarily complicated. It has to be executed to an extremely high quality. The science is extremely important to get right and to be at the highest level of thinking. Add to this, the need for these new medicines to also be accessible and affordable, that's a real challenge.
I'm really happy to say that I think we can get there. Allow me to give some history as to how we came into being and how we came to be partners with Novartis and how we came to rise, I believe, to this challenge that we're facing. MMV was formed about 26 years ago. We came out of what was called the chloroquine crisis, when the only real effective drug for malaria, chloroquine, became pretty much useless as the parasite adapted to become resistant to it. Through the 1990s, mortality climbed until you got to about 1.2 million deaths per year because the treatments just weren't working anymore. Governments, pharmaceutical industry, WHO got together and created our organization, Medicines for Malaria Venture, to drive and forge partnerships, global partnerships to drive innovation, to develop new medicines.
Now, about the same time, Novartis was coming forward with the new generation, a revolutionary new medicine for malaria, the next generation after chloroquine. It was called Coartem, and it contained a revolutionary new agent called artemisinin. This has been the mainstay of treatment for malaria for the last 25 years. We've been fellow travelers with Novartis for a quarter of a century, and we've been close partners now for 20 years. It's been an incredible partnership, delivering new medicines, new formulations. I think we'll talk a little bit later about a really exciting new dawn in innovation as well. This innovation is, as I said, extremely expensive and complicated and has to be driven through true partnership. At the core of it has to be a company with vision, with scale, and scientific expertise to lead the development.
I'm really delighted that Novartis is so committed to this fight.
I'm glad we're able to contribute and collaborate, Martin. Maybe we talk about something that we saw recently, where we saw encouraging clinical trial data from the Ganaplacide-Lumefantrine combination, part of our innovation pipeline for antimalarials. In your perspective, what makes this innovation significant in terms of our fight against malaria? We'd love to hear your thoughts.
It really is fantastic data. I think it's been released a little bit, so I think I can talk about it slightly. We saw very, very good efficacy, at least as good as current standard of care. We also saw indicators that this new mechanism of action is going to have a high barrier to resistance. As I said, the big fight is staying ahead of the parasite's ability to adapt and become resistant. This is a huge advance. It looks like it has transmission-blocking properties. This is game-changing. Think about what I talked about with the failure of chloroquine, and then Novartis coming in with Coartem and the next generation 25 years ago of the artemisinin-containing drugs. We're seeing partial resistance already developing to this class of drugs, the artemisinin drugs. We're seeing delayed cures. We're seeing some frank failures.
History and biology tells us eventually we'll be in the same situation with the current class of drugs as we were with chloroquine. So having Ganaplacide-Lumefantrine as a brand new product with a brand new mechanism of action designed to stay ahead of the parasite's ability to adapt and become resistant is going to be an incredible advance.
Now, we're excited about the data as well. How do you see the future of malaria innovation, and what do you think we can achieve together with these partnerships?
At the beginning, I talked about this huge, massive burden of disease, this goliath of a disease, the impact it has on communities, a quarter of a billion infections, 600,000 deaths per year, most of them very young children. Even in that context, I think we can be cautiously optimistic. Allow me to tell you why. I think we're entering a golden new age of innovation for malaria, not just to treat malaria, but also to prevent malaria and eventually to eliminate malaria. The reason we treat malaria and prevent malaria is to save children's lives, but we must always think about how do we use this toolbox to eradicate this disease from the face of the earth. I'm excited because we have Ganaplacide-Lumefantrine. We just talked about that.
I know we're working together on a really exciting new platform where we're combining that with a fast-acting new drug that has the potential to give what we call single-dose cure. The ability that when the mum brings her baby to the clinic with malaria or the temperature, you can observe that baby getting that one treatment in the clinic or in the middle of the village. That baby has no more medicines they need to take, and they are cured, as opposed to twice-a-day treatments for three days. That will be an extraordinary advance. I think we are getting towards that, realizing that vision. That's cure. We're working with global partners where we're looking at new technologies to prevent, as well as vaccines.
We have long-acting injectable medicines where imagine one injection into a child's arm at the beginning of a season, one injection of a medicine prevents them for the entire season from getting malaria. That's it. One supervised visit. Combine that with insecticide-treated nets, and you can visualize a toolbox of advanced technologies that will really bend the curve of malaria and take us to this really, really incredible goal of elimination of malaria from planet Earth. Wouldn't that be incredible?
It's amazing, right? Just thinking about that future is incredible. Thank you so much for your valuable insights. We really appreciate the long-standing partnership with MMV and Novartis and look forward to continuing that journey with you and looking forward to eliminating malaria.
Sujatha, it's my pleasure, and we're so proud to be your partners.
Same here. Thank you so much, Martin.
That was excellent. It's gratifying to see the strong relationships we've built with our partners who are critical to the work we do in social impact and sustainability. I'm Korab Zuka. I joined Novartis late last year as the new Global Head of Social Impact and Chief Sustainability Officer. Today, I'll walk you through how Novartis is strengthening our social impact and sustainability strategy, and in particular, how our new Inclusive Health Accelerators, or as we call them, IHAs, will help us reach underserved populations in our priority markets. A key principle guides all of this: disparities rarely come from a single factor. They're almost always driven by a mix of socioeconomic conditions, geography, insurance coverage, and the structural capacity of the healthcare system.
To present how we are further evolving our strategy, I'd like to focus on our inclusion and access pillar, as Lutz has already presented our global health work, and Steffen will talk about our environmental sustainability. Our access principles, R&D, affordability, and health system strengthening really remain the foundation for how we bring our medicines to more patients. They guide how we think about our trials, pricing approaches, and how we work with health systems to improve access. We recognize that no single company can close the access gaps alone, which is why our approach is built on partnerships across the broader healthcare ecosystem. As a company, we've already made strong progress through several initiatives like tiered pricing, emerging market brands, and other efforts that expand access. The next step is to ensure our innovative medicines reach underserved patients in our priority markets.
To do this, we've designed inclusive health accelerators, a structured model to reach underserved communities. Over time, we will extend this approach to different markets so that access really becomes fully embedded in how our country teams operate. Inclusive health accelerators are strategic initiatives that are built around the high-priority therapeutic areas, really designed to identify underserved populations in specific markets and address key barriers to care along the patient journey. The idea is simple. Historically, access was about low and middle-income countries. We know that even in developed markets, there are underserved populations who are not getting our medicines. Entire segments of patients are falling through the cracks. We developed a data-driven approach to identify these patients and expand our reach while creating sustainable business growth. We started by designing IHAs for the US market, focusing on prostate cancer, cardiovascular disease, and breast cancer.
We plan to launch them using a phased approach in the first half of 2026. Let me make this real with the example of prostate cancer. We started by looking at the patient funnel for prostate cancer. In the U.S., Black men are nearly twice as likely to develop the disease. When we go deeper into the patient funnel, the patterns mirror socioeconomic and structural factors in that men in low-income zip codes are less likely to have a regular provider, less likely to be screened, and less likely to have access to PSMA imaging. As a matter of fact, we see a striking disparity. Black men are about 10% less likely to receive a PSMA scan. For context, a PSMA scan is a specialized imaging test that helps doctors better understand the type of cancer they're dealing with and actually decide if advanced treatments are appropriate.
Without that scan, which has a positivity rate of almost 90% for metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer patients, they may never be able to identify as candidates for more advanced therapies such as radiopharmaceuticals. The gap in diagnostics is critical because it could be one of those factors contributing to the fact that Black men face twice the mortality rate from prostate cancer compared to white men. We found similar gaps in breast cancer, where Black women have comparable screening rates, but 10% higher mortality in cardiovascular disease, where we saw that Black people have 25% higher occurrence of elevated Lp(a) levels. These gaps track closely with socioeconomic indicators, where a patient lives, the type of hospital they can visit, insurance status, and availability of advanced imaging. We asked, how can we make sure these patients are not left behind?
Working together with the therapeutic area teams in the US, we mapped the barriers keeping these groups from accessing appropriate care. For prostate cancer, for example, Black men are more likely to visit community hospitals than academic centers. Many community hospitals do not offer PSMA scans. Plus, community oncologists do not have a large referral network to forward patients to centers that could perform it. Based on the identified barriers for the three therapeutic areas, we designed solutions that could be clustered in four archetypes. The first archetype, awareness and empowerment, focusing on community-based education and trusted local voices that built understanding of risk, screening, and treatment. For example, faith-based campaigns that normalize screening discussions. The second archetype, navigation and access, supporting patients move through the health system from screening to referral and follow-up, such as community health workers guiding patients to follow-up appointments.
The third archetype, provider readiness, providing training and tools that enable providers to deliver timely, guideline-based, and culturally competent care. For instance, virtual learning networks for clinicians in urban and rural areas. The fourth archetype, impact measurement and model expansion, leveraging both local data and shared learning that track results and scale the most effective solutions. We will work with local, reputable partners to implement these initiatives and expand access to those overlooked populations. This approach not only brings together social impact and sustainable growth, but also strengthens Novartis' reputation and relationships with healthcare systems and communities, positioning us as a partner of choice in an era of increasing scrutiny and accountability. As previously mentioned, we're building the inclusive growth accelerators in the US first, taking a phased approach for implementation and starting with prostate cancer. We have plans to expand to other markets in the near future.
For us, this isn't just about meeting social impact expectations. It's about supporting the redefinition of what sustainable growth looks like in healthcare, one that is measurable and deeply aligned with our purpose to improve and extend lives. As we think about social impact and sustainability, it's also incumbent on us to think about our environmental footprint. Although pharmaceuticals are not the most carbon-intensive industry, we still have a role to play, both in terms of climate risk mitigation as well as adaptation of our portfolio, building a climate-resistant pipeline that can tackle disease burdens exacerbated by climate change. I'd like to hand back to Steffen, who will share more about our environmental sustainability efforts.
Thank you, Korab. As nature becomes an increasingly important topic for our industry, we have updated our environmental sustainability framework this year. Previously, our framework focused on three areas: climate, water, and waste. We have now streamlined it into two pillars: climate and nature. Our ongoing efforts of water and waste remain a key priority and are now included within the new nature pillar. In the following slides, we will share our progress against both our climate and nature targets. Here is a summary of our performance against our 2025 targets. These targets are part of our legacy commitments, and the progress shown here reflects our performance as of third quarter this year. In the Q3 progress column, you'll notice that we have already achieved most of our 2025 targets, and for the remaining targets, we are confident to meet them by the end of this year.
Our ambition is to achieve net zero by 2040, and here is our transition plan. At the top, you will see our scope 1 and 2 reduction plan, and at the bottom, our scope 3 reduction plan. For scope 1 and 2 emissions, we've already made strong progress and continue to reduce emissions in line with our approved SBTi trajectory, aiming for a 90% reduction by 2030 and then maintaining it thereafter. For scope 3 emissions, we have reduced them by 13% versus 2022 baseline as of last year. Our target is a 42% reduction by 2030 and 90% reduction by 2040. Addressing scope 3 emissions is a key priority as the majority, namely more than 90%, come from upstream supply activities. Therefore, we are working closely with our suppliers to drive emissions reductions across the value chain.
We have listed some of the key actions we are taking with our suppliers here. You can see our three-step approach. First, we are onboarding suppliers in line with our targets by including environmental sustainability criteria in their supply contracts. To date, more than 90% of supplier emissions are covered by these criteria. This year, we also updated our procurement process, such as sourcing evaluation and RFP processes, to ensure these criteria applied consistently with new suppliers. Second, we are engaging with direct suppliers to collect product-specific carbon footprint data. To facilitate this, we are using the Siemens data platform, Seagreen, which helps us track the carbon footprint associated with our products. Third, we continue to partner with our peers to define common minimum sustainability standards for suppliers and help them build their capabilities. Having said that, scope 3 remains a complex challenge.
At the bottom, you will see some of our key challenges. Suppliers have different levels of maturity when it comes to prioritizing sustainability topics, and there is hesitance to invest early due to the relatively higher cost of green technologies. Climate policies also vary by country. Most European countries aim for net zero by 2050, China by 2060, and India by 2070. We do expect that policies and regulations will further streamline in the future, which will further support this transition. Now, moving to another pillar, nature. Here you see our 2030 targets built around water and waste, which are part of our existing targets, and two new focus areas, protecting biodiversity and sustainable sourcing, which we are currently developing. For water, we have two targets: water consumption, aligned with the nature standard SBTN, focusing on sites in water-stressed regions.
Our 2030 scope covers both our own sites and supplier sites in these regions. Second, water quality, expanded from 2025 scope to now include labs and all API suppliers by 2030, in addition to manufacturing sites and high-risk suppliers. For waste, our target is to reduce waste by 30% by 2030 versus 2022 baseline. We are tracking well and have already achieved a 22% reduction to date. The two new focus areas we have started working on are implementing a biodiversity management plan for sites located in or near protected areas, and implementing a sustainable sourcing program with paper as a pilot commodity. We aim to define specific targets for these areas once assessments and pilot initiatives are complete.
To summarize, based on Article 964 of the Swiss Code of Obligations and our previous non-financial reporting, we believe we are well positioned to comply with the CSRD, the EU Taxonomy, and CSDDD once the EU Omnibus legislation is finalized. We are working to continuously strengthen our non-financial reporting systems and processes, striving to bring them to the same level of robustness as financial reporting over time. This includes obtaining limited assurance from our auditors and refining our processes to meet any future requirements for reasonable assurance. Generally, we feel confident and on track to fulfill these obligations. For the reporting of full year 2025, we will adjust our disclosure strategy to focus on a more targeted report on non-financial matters to meet regulatory requirements. This change does not reflect a shift in our ESG strategy or commitments.
Rather, it aims to ensure our readiness for future requirements and to maintain consistency across regulatory filings. We will continue to share relevant information that may not be included in the report through other channels, such as our usual ESG data summary, to communicate effectively with certain investors and stakeholders. This slide indicates that we are on track to achieve our 2025 ESG targets and meet our commitments related to sustainability-linked bonds, which are maturing at the end of this year. As you can see, even at the nine-month mark, we have already met our targets for the number of patients reached with strategic innovative therapies in low-middle-income countries, global health R&D, as well as for water and waste management, as previously mentioned. We are making excellent progress in these areas and remain on course to meet our 2025 ESG targets.
On the next slide, we have a snapshot of our prioritized ESG ratings. While our initiatives are not driven by these ratings, we are proud of our achievements and welcome the external and independent validation of our efforts. Notably, we have been part of the leaders' group in the Access to Medicines Index for the past 10 years, and this year, we have reached the number one position. This is particularly gratifying considering our transformation journey. As you know, just a couple of years ago, we spun off Sandoz, our generics arms. While this may result in an overall decrease in patient reach, achieving the top spot reinforces our commitment to expanding access, particularly to innovative medicines, so it's really nice to see that progress. Additionally, we have received an upgrade to AAA from MSCI, the highest possible rating. Our controversy score also improved from yellow to green.
Additionally, we are in the leaders' group for ISS ESG, number one amongst peers in sustainability and maintain a double A-list status with the CDP for both climate change and water security. As we close, let me highlight six key messages. First, we remain fully committed to our social impact and sustainability strategy, even as the external environment continues to evolve. Second, we are launching inclusive health accelerators to combine social impact with sustainable business growth. Third, Novartis continues to lead the global health innovation with eight new chemical entities in clinical development. Fourth, our malaria portfolio reflects more than 25 years of unwavering commitment to global health. Fifth, we have strengthened our sustainability framework with a sharper focus on climate and nature. Finally, we continue to make strong progress on our social impact and sustainability targets, earning recognition as an industry leader.
These actions underscore our dedication to creating long-term value for patients, society, and our shareholders. With that, I invite our panelists to join me for the Q&A session.
Thank you, Steffen, Lutz, and Korab for your presentations. As we open the Q&A, I would actually like to focus on the top social impact and sustainability questions that we've been receiving from our investors. Let me start off with a recurring question this year, and it relates to the financial rationale behind our social impact and sustainability initiatives. Maybe starting off with you, Lutz, could you elaborate on the business case for the global health program? Some investors have actually asked, with climate change accelerating the spread of vector-borne diseases, do you see the Novartis global health as a potential long-term growth opportunity?
Yeah, thanks for the question, Mavik. I think we need to remind ourselves that the main motive why we are doing the global health programs, both in the infectious diseases but also the community health work, is to create the desired impact on those communities. Particularly, the diseases in tropical medicines are often characterized as market failure. While that may change, it also implies that the business rationale comes later, and the impact rationale needs to be the first to consider. As you know, the way we have set this up is that our programs are self-sustainable. They're financially sustainable, so they are not dependent on constant investment. In some parts of the world, some of our programs are accretive to the business, so they not only deliver the societal impact that we aspire but also financial impact.
Thank you, Lutz. Let me turn to you, Korab. You actually mentioned that the inclusive health accelerators are strategically aligned with our core therapeutic areas. Could you just walk us through how this alignment translates into tangible value creation for Novartis, both from a business and impact perspective?
Yeah, thank you for the question. The inclusive health accelerators are really these are in our core therapeutic areas where we, as an organization, have actually a leadership position in. In CBD, in oncology, and they're really meant to translate into value the following ways. The first one, it is really around making sure that we're building trust with communities, patient groups, and these are communities in a way that have really very frequently not been seen by the healthcare systems. We believe by building this trust, we'll be able to improve the diagnosis, but also we'll be able to improve treatment initiation and also adherence.
The other piece that's really unique to the Inclusive Health Accelerators is that we are working to address the specific barriers that patients face in a way that allows for these very targeted interventions that enable us to really look at the fragmentation of the healthcare system so that we can drive that intervention and a solution to those patients. If we're able to really narrow these inequities, we will be able to both increase our social impact, but also from a business perspective in terms of the value we'll be able to deliver.
Thank you. Stefan, from an operational resilience perspective, of course, we have to ask that question. Have you observed measurable financial benefits from our environmental sustainability efforts? We know that these initiatives likely drive efficiencies, but we also know that they also require upfront capital investments. How do you actually do the trade-off and assess the return of these investments?
Yes, thanks a lot for the question. Yeah, we see tangible financial benefits out of those efforts, and it starts with our direct cost. When we look at our energy efficiency programs, we see, for example, reduced energy consumption, which translates directly in reducing our spend. It goes beyond electricity. Our efforts on waste reduction and increasing recycling also result in financial benefits as you use less material, as you recycle material. Last but not least, part of our water activities is as well to reduce water consumption. As a result, of course, this has also a financial benefit. When you look at overall our investment, we started several years ago in technical operations when we look at capital investment to embed environmental sustainability as a key theme into each investment proposal.
What is very interesting to observe is that most of our CapEx project proposals have a positive financial benefit, for example, through upgrading of utilities or replacing and upgrading cooling and heating systems. All in all, we have over the past years invested more than $200 million into those efforts. As I said, most of them is a very positive payback financially. I would say that's the direct measurable financial benefit, but of course, it goes beyond that. There is also an indirect, not so much measurable benefit as, of course, we fulfill with our efforts regulatory requirements, and we also have an increase in trust of our stakeholders. All in all, it's not only the right thing to do, but also it has tangible financial benefits for us.
Thank you, Stefan. That was reassuring. Now shifting gears to something very topical this year, I think it would go amiss if we do not talk about the current external environment. Back to you, Stefan, on supply chain resilience. It remains a top priority, particularly in today's volatile global environment. How is actually Novartis managing risks relating to supply chain resilience? We know that recently we had an announcement on new manufacturing facilities in the US. Does this represent a strategic move to bolster supply chain resilience?
Yeah, look, first of all, of course, it's our key objective to ensure uninterrupted supply of all of our medications to patients worldwide. I think I'm very proud to report that we are doing very well on this. Our customer service levels are close to 100% over the past few years, and this is basically a track record which we are really proud of. For sure, it's all built on a fit-for-purpose manufacturing network. We have more than 30 sites in our network. We partner also with external suppliers to complement where required. These investments to maintain our network up to state-of-the-art is very important. Moreover, I think the way we then deliver the demand worldwide is centered around an appropriate inventory policy. We always have a certain stock level in the country, but also at the different stages of manufacturing.
Another important aspect is for most of our products, more than 80%, we have set up two parallel supply chains, which is very important to overcome local geopolitical challenges or challenges with regard to transport. This results then truly in the very high customer service levels. You mentioned our investment. We recently announced a large investment, a $23 billion investment in the US, one of our key markets. It is really a strategic investment in the market where we see also an enormous growth. This investment into six new facilities, not only in manufacturing, also there is an inherent increase in R&D investment related to that. The tech ops investment will, of course, ensure that we also can continue to ensure access of these medicines to make them available.
Over the next few years, we will make sure that all key products will be produced locally in the U.S. and the U.S. We believe it will further strengthen our ability to supply products to the U.S. locally, but also globally through other areas where we also have growth. This is thanks to the strength of our supply chain setup.
Perfect. Thank you. Lutz, turning over to you. With increasing constraints on public funding for global health, how have your programs been impacted? What strategies are in place to ensure continuity and scalability in this current external environment?
Yeah, we have certainly seen the consequences of the very sudden and very significant reduction in official development assistance being spent, especially on the African continent. Health systems that were weak to begin with are even weaker now and have very limited time to prepare themselves for that new scenario. Areas like disease surveillance, which is so important for infectious diseases, are suffering as much as individual patients. However, our direct programs are not impacted because we have never received direct assistance from any government. That was the reason why we have set up our global health approach in a self-sustainable way, that the little money that we essentially make, we reinvest into drug discovery, drug development, or health system strengthening on the ground. That has sort of insulated us from the overall spending levels that we see at the governments.
I see a potential here, of course, that we are now also pivoting into a new era of global health where private capital and private sector engagement could even be strengthened, for instance, through public-private partnerships. While the transition period will potentially be difficult and painful to manage, I think that we could emerge even stronger out of this situation in a way where countries take more ownership and global players support the priorities being set at country level rather than the other way around. That will require a lot of dedication and still hard work in order to arrive at that desired outcome.
Thank you. Korab, I think I need to ask a question on the most favored nation pricing, as this is also top of mind for a lot of our sustainability and stewardship analysts listening in the call. What impact do you expect the MFN policy in the U.S. to have on Novartis' inclusion and access initiatives? For example, how does Novartis price medicines in lower middle-income countries, and do you see any impacts at all from the MFN policy?
Sure. Maybe I can just start initially with framing the philosophy where we do look at a value-based approach in terms of how we price our medicines. That value is really looked at across three dimensions. The first dimension is the value to the patient. For example, this is exhibited in the form of potentially increased efficacy. The second value lens we look at is really the value to the healthcare system. This is exhibited, for example, as it could be reduced hospitalizations in terms of what we're providing. The third value lens that we look at is really the value to society. That means in terms of productivity and the return to the workforce for either the patient or the caregiver. We believe this is really fundamental in terms of how we approach our pricing philosophy.
We don't believe MFN is going to have an impact in terms of access and LMICs. We, as an organization, continue to be committed to piloting different approaches, different models to make sure that we're able to do our part to reach more patients around the world.
Thank you. I'm just conscious of time because we have a few minutes left for one more question. Maybe this is for you, Korab, because I think Steffen highlighted earlier that two of our three social targets are set to sunset by year-end. Korab, can you share how Novartis is approaching this next chapter on target setting? Are there plans to renew or redefine our social impact targets?
Yeah, so let me actually start initially with the good news in that we are actually on track to meet our targets that are associated with the sustainability-linked bond. We have also been working on the next generation targets, and we will be able to announce that in early 2026. Stay tuned for that. What you'll see in the new targets, it is a combination of, of course, our continued commitment around access and making sure our medicines make it to patients around the world. Of course, we are continuing with all of our climate-related commitments, our commitment to global health, and you'll see some new areas in terms of the work that we're doing as part of the evolved social impact and sustainability strategy. I would just say stay tuned for that.
I'm sure the investors tuning in are eagerly waiting for those new social impact targets. I just want to say thank you to our speakers and the investors tuning in. Thank you for your time and engagement. If there are any questions that we did not address in this webcast, please feel free to reach out to me or any member of the investor relations team. Thank you.