Global Access Strategy
Pfizer's Global Access team is exploring innovative business models to increase access to health care and medicine for low-income populations in emerging markets. We are integrating commercially viable global health solutions into the way Pfizer does business to sustainably reach patients Pfizer has never reached before through commercial channels.
Providing Important Medicines Through Institutional Buyers
One of the approaches of our Global Access strategy is to work with institutional buyers who purchase medicines for the neediest of patients. For example, Pfizer has long-standing business partnerships with both the U.S. Agency for International Development and the United Nations Population Fund to make our injectable contraceptive, Depo-Provera, available to women all across the globe, from sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia to Latin America. Our Global Access team aims to make a broad portfolio of our medicines accessible to as many low-income patients as possible by seeking to include appropriate Pfizer-originated medicines on the WHO prequalification list—a prerequisite for many institutional buyers.
Using Mobile Technology to Strengthen Access
Another element of the Global Access Strategy helps address barriers to access by using technology to improve the availability of medicine in low-income countries. For instance, Pfizer and the mobile phone company Vodafone are testing new technologies that help hospitals and health care clinics better manage their drug supply, create transparency in the supply chain and reduce the number of stock outages of vital medicines—all to the ultimate benefit of the patient.
The SMS for Health program, currently being tested in The Gambia, enables users across all levels of the pharmaceutical supply chain to communicate via text message with a central database that tracks drug availability. The program also tracks high-priority health events that occur at the clinic level, such as the number of patients who present with malaria, pneumonia and maternal health issues.
This collaboration is part of the "Business Call to Action," a global leadership initiative composed of companies applying their core business expertise and commercial channels to help achieve the eight Millennium Development Goals, which aim to contribute to the long-term economic growth and stability of developing countries.
