Large pharmaceutical companies have several reasons to promote their efforts to provide better access to medicines in the developing world.

Their image has been tarnished by actions that kept patented drugs away from poor countries in the past, and now their ailing business depends on growth in emerging markets. Two billion people in the world still lack access to essential medicines.

An index funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ranks pharmaceutical companies based on how well they are performing in research, pricing, patenting and donations to improve access for the poor. The index aims "to give industry a voice and a platform to design their access to medicine programs," according to a statement on the organization's website.

GRANT ERSKINE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

A giant AIDS ribbon is erected in Durban, South Africa. South African pharmaceutical company Aspen Pharmacare began producing the first cheap generic copies of major AIDS drugs in Africa seven years ago.

Run by a Netherlands-based foundation, the Access to Medicines Index compares 27 companies, including those that make generics.

The research work is done by the RiskMetrics Group, based on interviews, corporate documents and publicly available information. Much of the data is provided by the companies themselves, which makes some analysts skeptical about its integrity. The foundation says as public companies they have no incentive to provide inaccurate information to the marketplace. (But that hasn't stopped them in the past.)

The project aims to encourage transparency and cooperation between the companies and "combine the goals of science and business" to improve health.

In this year's rankings, European pharmaceutical companies performed better than their American counterparts. However, U.S.-based pharmaceutical companies are doing more than they have in the past to make medicines available to people in developing countries, the report found.

One way companies may seek to use the ratings for their advantage is in recruiting. News that UK-based GSK had achieved the top ranking in research geared toward needs of developing countries has already been posted on a pharmaceutical job site.