In Ghana, Spector had the chance to meet Dr. Kwaku Ohene-Frempong, one of the world’s foremost specialists on sickle cell disease. Ohene-Frempong had worked at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for many years and established the Sickle Cell Foundation of Ghana to ease the high disease burden in his home country.
Known among his peers as “Kof” – a contraction of the first letters of his first and last name – Ohene-Frempong quickly bonded with Spector after realizing that he worked for Novartis. “Roland Hammond-Addo, Fionnuala Doyle, and others from Novartis had started to help Kof’s team to develop the first-ever treatment guidelines for sickle cell disease in Ghana. Kof clearly respected them and was very open to exploring ways to extend the collaboration,” Spector explained.
The relationship with Kof paved by Hammond-Addo, Doyle and others proved decisive, serving both as anchor and springboard to create a group of dedicated Novartis associates working on a potential solution to tackle sickle cell disease in Ghana and beyond.
“The good relations with Kof gave the initial idea another boost,” Spector said. “What was unique about sickle cell disease was threefold: The unmet needs were immense, there were no major organizations working to address it at large scale, and several divisions at Novartis were already deeply engaged in the disease area. It didn’t take long to identify colleagues around the company who were ready to put heads together to form a sort of coalition of the willing and scope out how Novartis might be able to contribute in historic ways.”
Besides winning early support from Lutz Hegemann, Global Health COO, and Harald Nusser, Head Novartis Social Business, the group was soon joined by Spector’s long-time friend Andrew Cavey, with whom he had worked during the hurricane Katrina crisis in 2005 in the United States. Cavey, a physician by training, was more than a welcome addition. He was overseeing the clinical trials of an innovative antibody-based sickle cell treatment, the first-ever drug to be developed for this disease.
More people joined soon afterward, including Kileken ole-MoiYoi, who is responsible for the strategy behind the global health efforts of Novartis, as well as Christopher Junge from Sandoz in Holzkirchen.
As the idea gained traction, Tay Salimullah, who previously led pricing and access across different Novartis divisions, came on board in April 2018. He quickly assembled a diverse team with members from all parts of the organization, helping accelerate the project and achieve the near impossible: turning the initial idea into reality when the program was officially launched in Ghana on November 6, 2019.
