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Access to Healthcare
We enable sustainable access to our solutions to address local needs through collaborative partnerships and a holistic approach to health.Learn more -
Access for NTDs
Learn MoreSetting up a new access path, complementary to donations, to extend population reach and move towards long-term sustainability.
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Delivering Health
Learn moreOur approach for access to healthcare in low- and middle-income countries at glance.
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Health Equity
Our overarching aim is to make tomorrow’s world a healthier place – for everyone.
Our Promise
“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 Priorities
Helping to contribute to the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and aligned with our Sustainability Strategy, Health Equity is a strategic priority for our company and an integral part of our Global Health strategy.
Realizing our vision involves systematically identifying and eliminating inequities arising from disparities in health and overall living conditions.
We help by working to lower systemic barriers and by creating sustainable, long-term solutions and partnerships to improve health outcomes. We integrate a people-centered approach in our health equity strategy.
More details can be found in our Health Equity White Paper and in our Sustainability Statement 2025 under Consumers and End-Users (S4).
Our Approach
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.
As part of our commitment to health equity, we implement our Access Strategy for Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) to reach millions of patients in these countries. Our ambition is to serve more than 170 million patients per year in LMICS by 2030: over 80 million patients with access to our healthcare portfolio for non-communicable diseases (NCDs); and over 90 million patients with our Global Health portfolio of schistosomiasis-related products.
Our strong performance in the Access to Medicine Index 2024 demonstrates our firm commitment to drive health equity.
Living our Commitment
More than 15 years ago we committed ourselves to the fight against schistosomiasis. Learn more about our efforts to eliminate the disease.
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Towards zero malaria
Malaria is a major health and social issue. Our initiatives focus on innovative products and technologies.
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Building Equality for Women’s Health
Gender equality requires urgent actions to address the many challenges in health for women in low- and middle-income countries.
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Healthy Women Healthy Economies
The Healthy Women, Healthy Economies initiative strives to unleash the economic power of women by bringing governments, employers and other interested stakeholders together to help to improve women’s health so women - and by extension their families - can join, thrive, rise in their communities and live better lives.
learn moreOur Contact
The team can be contacted at: GlobalHealth@emdgroup.com