Biogen Idec and partner Swedish Orphan Biovitrum AB promised donations of hemophilia drugs for use in developing nations, in a bid to make it possible for thousands of patients to receive the much-needed treatment over the next decade.

The announcement was made during the World Federation of Hemophilia (WFH) meeting in Melbourne, Australia, on Monday.

Biogen and Sobi vowed that they will provide the potentially life-saving clotting factor medicines in large-enough quantities to Africa, Asia and elsewhere. These parts of the world account for a third of the world's 400,000 hemophilia sufferers with no or limited access to such drugs. This is a real worry because many of those sufferers are not able to live into adulthood because of complications of their worsening disease.

Biogen and Sobi want to donate one billion international units of clotting factor drugs over 10 years. "WFH do their work in countries that consume less than 1 iu per capita. That's a level below which people are dying, where they don't even have enough to treat the life-threatening bleeds", said Paula Cobb, Biogen's head of hematology.

Hemophilia is an inherited disorder, which does not allow the blood to clot properly and Biogen is looking at it as a new therapeutic area. The US FDA approved Alprolix to treat the more rare hemophilia B last month.

Biogen is based in Weston, Massachusetts and Sobi is based in Stoockholm. They both announced to donate up to 500 million units to WFH over five years and rest of 500 million units will be made available for future distribution.

The announcement has paved the way for doctors to treat more than 75,000 joint bleeding episodes and over 2,000 life-threatening bleeds. Moreover, they will be able to perform thousands of surgical procedures that can't be performed without using clotting drugs, said the companies.