Health Equity

“Sparking Discovery, Elevating Humanity” is not just what we do. It defines how we lead. In our company, we are working to change how we deliver breakthroughs to create impact.

Despite growing awareness of the lack of access to essential health services and health system barriers that continue to perpetuate health disparities, at least half of the world’s population lacks access to essential health care and 344 million people are pushed further into extreme poverty due to health expenses.

The evolving landscape presents an opportunity to serve as a catalyst for addressing health inequities, simultaneously improving outcomes and advancing business priorities in a sustainable way.

This inspires our commitment to drive health equity – helping communities have access to quality care and achieve their best possible health outcome.

“Equitable access to healthcare is not just a goal, but a fundamental right. Elevating Humanity means we must systematically explore how we can combine business approaches to narrow health disparities in the communities we serve. “ Danny Bar-Zohar (Member of the Executive Board, CEO Healthcare, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany)

Our efforts to drive Health Equity are steered by three guiding principles:

• We start with people: co-creating and responding to the needs of patients, carers, and communities as active participants and beneficiaries of their care solutions.
• Build through systems: aligning with global and local health priorities to forge partnerships and enable long-term health system integration.
• Sustain through shared value: embedding health equity in the commercial strategy as a growth driver through sustainable and scalable business models.

A key component of our health equity strategy is enabling access to our medicines, adopting a holistic approach in addressing:

Availability

Driving the development of solutions to address health challenges, using needs-based Research & Development and responsible Intellectual Property while planning for fastest and broadest access to innovation.

Accessibility

Strengthening health services and infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries to enable patient access to the best possible care.

Affordability

Implementing innovative mechanisms for equitable and sustainable access to our innovations and products.