The “Friday Spotlight” has rapidly become a “Saturday Spotlight,” but bear with me.
Today Johnson & Johnson announced a plan to donate $200 million in cash to women and children in the developing world. The company will donate its medicine for treating intestinal worms in children, send pregnant women messages on prenatal health on their cell phones, and work to make childbirth safer. J&J also will continue research on new treatments for the AIDS virus and tuberculosis.
J&J CEO Bill Weldon has spent recent months trying to refurbish J&J’s once-golden reputation, which has been tarnished by 11 recalls of medicines, contact lenses and hip implants in the last year. The largest recall involved 136 million bottles of children’s and infants’ liquid medicines that might have contained tiny metal particles or had too much of their active ingredient.
Well, this’ll do it. Although it’s unclear how J&J’s initiative fits into the many other initiatives for women and children ahead of the Millennium Development Goals Summit. We’ll see! Kudos to J&J for their generous donation, though.
