PHARMACEUTICAL companies around the globe are donating billions of dollars in free drugs to third world countries grappling with poverty and disease.

Abbott Laboratories is taking its philanthropy a step further.

The Illinois-based company is donating the time of dozens of workers with expertise in food sciences and engineering, in addition to $6.5 million cash, to build a charitable, self-sustaining nutrition enterprise in Haiti, the poorest country of the Western Hemisphere.

On the central plateau of Haiti one day recently, 18 women sat in the shade hand-sorting peanuts in wide, flat baskets.

“You know the misery we live in,” said one of them, Francilia Joseph. “I have six children at home. With this money, I’m able to send three of them to school.”