What is Swiss Working Group?

We’re an early-stage global startup leveraging a new and previously unavailable drug that treats the negative health effects of air pollution. We’re currently a small, interdisciplinary, distributed team with expertise across sectors and industries. We share deep experience in impact at the intersection of social, economic, and environmental systems. As an emerging Social Benefit Corporation, our business model is based on the sale of our drug – proceeds of which are expected to be significant and will be allocated toward establishing a financially independent and sustainable NGO. Over time, we’ll equip the NGO to partner with local communities to establish permanent, locally owned teaching hospitals in regions that need healthcare. Our intention is to alleviate the severe and widespread human health issues associated with air pollution while promoting community resilience and dignity – not dependence. Our work is based on human-centered design, and we’re committed to evolving the humanitarian sector to be more sustainable and equitable.

Why it matters

More than 90% of the world’s population lives in areas with medically unsafe levels of air pollution according to the World Health Organization and 7-8 million people die prematurely due to its effects each year. Air pollution is the second leading cause of premature death globally and responsible for 15% of deaths for children under 5, at a rate of almost 2,000 deaths per day. At 7.4B people affected globally, the WHO estimates that people who don’t yet have chronic health conditions are at risk of developing them due to exposure to air pollution.
Further, air pollution is proven to exacerbate many existing health conditions:

chronic respiratory disease (468M people)
cardiovascular disease (612M people)
dementia (55M people)
diabetes (589M adults)
infertility (165M people)

Our drug is the first known solution. To the best of our knowledge, there are no other medications capable of making such a significant impact on this widespread problem.

Because our drug addresses one of the largest market gaps globally - 7.4B people whose health is impacted by air pollution - we anticipate significant sales based on a highly extensive and thorough global marketing campaign. Essential and life-saving drugs like ours that are manufactured and distributed under a single brand can have a 60% adoption rate out of all prospective customers. In our case, that would total approximately 4.44B customers. Our pricing model is adjusted for the Socio-Economic Index of each region so most prospective customers will be able to access and benefit from our product regardless of income status.

Why does our solution need more urgent support than other medical issues?

Air pollution is a profoundly ubiquitous problem that knows no borders or boundaries. In most parts of the world, tainted air plagues anyone who doesn’t have a medical grade air filter for their home or workplace, or who spends time outdoors without wearing a medical grade mask. Air, almost by definition, is everywhere on earth, making air pollution one of the most unavoidable and universally detrimental medical issues in human history. Air pollution is concentrated more in some regions than others, but cannot be contained and reaches almost every corner of the globe at medically harmful levels.

Remarkably, few leaders or institutions are actively addressing this issue and even healthcare professionals are not necessarily trained on the enormity of the situation. While inhalers offer momentary help for those who can afford them, they merely temporarily relieve symptoms and don’t offer sustained benefit or prevent premature death. By contrast, our drug is a solution that prevents premature death and disease associated with toxic air; further, we’re crafting a pricing model that ensures drug accessibility for anyone who needs it. In a class of its own and answering a problem that most people on the planet face daily, our drug provides an unprecedented and urgent answer.

Why not simply donate our drug to an existing organization?

Our decision to found a new enterprise was not taken lightly. We examined many possibilities, including giving our IP to existing NGOs, pharmaceutical companies, medical organizations, and others. However, our in-depth research revealed that no existing organization is currently equipped to deliver the human-centered medical support that we envision. Our goal is to operate through truly accessible, ethical, and sustainable patient care. In founding our company, we’re striving to deliver not only our drug to anyone who needs it, but also to transform the future of global health as the world has known it. Rather than prioritizing our proprietary IP for its own sake, we're crafting substantial improvements to the humanitarian ecosystem by aggressively learning from what has (and hasn’t) worked and systematizing significant, data-based improvements.

What’s at stake if we don’t take action?

Due to the remarkable death rate and public health implications of air pollution-related disease, expediting our drug’s release is of utmost importance: lives are literally on the line, with an estimated 580,000 lost with each month that funding is delayed.

Further, air pollution is an existential threat to social and economic security. In addition to 7M premature deaths annually, air pollution also interrupts our way of life. Toxic air affects most parts of economic security, with global costs estimated at $500B (USD) in 2025 and increasing to over $1T (USD) by 2040. According to the OECD, “While it is clear that by far the largest cost component is the welfare loss from premature deaths, indirect economic consequences as induced by the various market impacts have an increasingly important role.” The world requires expedited intervention to not only save lives, but to also ensure social stability across some of the world’s most populous regions.

For example, health implications in China have already impacted economics as workers flee areas with particularly dense pollution. And in contrast, improved air quality in Europe led to economic growth. With intertwined international economies, deteriorations in health and wellbeing could be catastrophic for the entire globe. Toxic air knows no boundaries, so companies and governments cannot simply relocate their workforce or their residents to indefinitely safe areas. Our organization focuses on health interventions at scale, but in doing so, we aim to dramatically transform economic and social resilience.

What are the benefits of our unique approach to manufacturing and distribution?

Our model circumvents political obstacles and institutional lag. Rather than follow traditional, sequential, and time-intensive processes, immediate action will save millions of lives. Because the current conditions for clinical drug testing are fraught with delays, we are working with pioneers in the drug development industry to expedite testing without compromising efficacy. By partnering with Contract Drug Manufacturing and Contract Research Organizations as a test case, we’re prioritizing relationships and embodying sustainable, shared success. Together, we’ve arranged a significant shortcut that only requires 16 months until the drug is fully ready for widespread sale.

Since our drug is a mixture of approved safe pharmaceutical active ingredients, safety risks are greatly reduced. Typically, the Go To Market process would require a significantly longer time frame; we estimate that our expedited timeline will save approximately millions of lives globally (one estimate is ~ 11.6M lives). Our sophisticated strategy includes establishing drug manufacturing and local partnerships for patient care concurrently so that sales and distribution can commence immediately once clinical trials are complete. The only delay at this stage is securing sufficient funding, but we are ready to initiate immediately upon capitalization and are actively seeking partners who share our values and are ready to act.

What is our criteria for partnering with investors or donors?

To maintain consistent criteria, we are collaborating with research-backed vetting frameworks to ensure that we vet all partnerships with equal, fair, and transparent rigor. More information about our due diligence process will be available soon.

We decline to partner with industries such as weapons, fossil fuels, and tobacco.
We also decline partnership with parties who have ties to governments, institutions, or groups that are in violation of human or environmental rights. Please inquire for details.

Why partner with us?

Among a crowded landscape of compelling health needs and investment opportunities, our intervention is poised to help more people globally, both immediately and over time. We anticipate that our drug and our business model are jointly poised to be historically significant transformations to health at a global scale. We welcome individuals, communities, and organizations who are actively invested in co-creating resilience and adaptability at the intersection of climate and health. We are committed to curating human-centered relationships (not transactions) with partners who share our values.

How is our model different?

Our organizational model blends the best of corporate, NGO, and community work. With large portions of our revenue directed toward an NGO that funds permanent, locally-owned teaching hospitals, our Corporate Social Responsibility efforts are exceptional and intended to be industry leading. Unlike typical humanitarian aid that's based on dependency, we're establishing a model that is as viable long term as it is short term. Through human-centered design, we partner with local patient communities to develop unprecedented reach and efficacy for our drug. We collaborate with stakeholders to craft culturally affirming healthcare, which will measurably enhance treatment adoption rate and efficacy. By partnering with communities to train local healthcare professionals to deliver long term care plans, we’re offering crucial medical intervention while also curating sustained social and economic resilience.