Pfizer 2011 Annual Review | Pfizer: the world's largest research-based pharmaceutical company

Efforts to Increase Access

We have implemented a portfolio of different partnerships and programs as part of our strategy to increase access to our medicines and improve health care for underserved populations in both developed and developing countries.

Providing Important Medicines Through Institutional Buyers

One of our approaches is to work closely with global 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. We are working to expand our relationship with such institutional buyers to make a broad portfolio of our medicines accessible to as many low-income patients as possible.

Bringing Prevenar 13 to Children in Need Worldwide

We have broadened and extended our commitment to help protect millions of infants and young children in the developing world from pneumococcal disease, the leading cause of vaccine-preventable death in young children. Pfizer will now supply up to 480 million doses of Prevenar 13 through 2023, under the auspices of the GAVI Alliance's Advance Market Commitment (AMC) for pneumococcal vaccines. Our initial agreement with the AMC, for 300 million doses over a 10-year period, was made in 2010, less than a year after the commercial introduction of Prevenar 13 in the U.S. and Europe, a historic precedent given the average 10–15-year lag between the introduction of newer vaccines in developed versus developing countries. To date, under the AMC, Prevenar 13 has been introduced into the national childhood immunization programs of Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, the Gambia, Guyana, Honduras, Malawi, Mali, Nicaragua, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Yemen. To meet the growing global demand for Prevenar 13, we are increasing our manufacturing capabilities through a combination of capital investment, process improvements and efficiency measures throughout our supply network. Additionally, we are developing a preserved, multidose vial which, subject to the required regulatory approval, World Health Organization prequalification and AMC eligibility requirements, is expected to offer an additional option for health authorities in developing nations.

Pfizer Helpful Answers

At Pfizer, we believe that all patients should have access to our medicines. That's why the Pfizer Helpful Answers family of patient assistance programs was created. For over 20 years, we've been committed to helping uninsured and underinsured Americans get the medicines they need. With just one call to our toll-free number, or a visit to our website (www.PfizerHelpfulAnswers.com), patients or their advocates will be directed to the Pfizer Helpful Answers program that might best meet their needs. Also, if we learn that patients are taking a medicine not made by Pfizer, we will refer them to other industry resources that might be able to help. In the last five years alone (2007–2011), Pfizer has helped 3.8 million uninsured and underinsured patients get access to more than 40 million Pfizer prescriptions for free or at a savings.*

To help raise awareness of these programs, Pfizer Helpful Answers has been partnering with leading national, regional, and local community-based and patient-focused organizations to ensure patients know that help is available. Learn more about Pfizer's efforts in the community at www.AdvocateCornerPHA.com.

* Pfizer Helpful Answers is a joint program of Pfizer Inc and the Pfizer Patient Assistance Foundation.™

Global Health Fellows

The Global Health Fellows Program is an international corporate volunteer program that places our colleagues with international development organizations designed to address global health issues and improve access, quality and efficiency of health care for underserved patients. Since 2003, over 300 Global Health Fellows have devoted more than 250,000 hours of volunteer service in 45 countries.

Assignments have included optimizing supply chains and business functions, and scaling up promising health prevention approaches. The program focuses on creating high social impact. Over time it has also yielded demonstrable business impact as Fellows return to Pfizer with a broader world vision and renewed focus on innovative ideas for reaching underserved communities with health solutions.

In 2010, Pfizer introduced a team-based volunteer component to the program to expand opportunities for colleagues to participate. Close to 50 colleagues have participated on Global Health teams in Groton, Connecticut and Peru, Mexico and Colombia. Teams work on three-week projects with community-based nonprofit partners and government health institutions to strengthen health care delivery. For example, the team in Groton focused on care improvements for Alzheimer's patients, while a team in Colombia focused on helping the country's National Cancer Institute to design a targeted cancer curriculum for health care providers.

Millennium Development Goals

Pfizer strongly supports the Millennium Development Goals established by global leaders in 2000. Focused on alleviating the suffering of the world's poorest people, the goals address poverty and hunger, disease, maternal health, child mortality, gender equality, education, environmental sustainability and the need for a partnership to advance global development. While we can contribute to all of the Millennium Development Goals, we are most keenly focused on those that are health-related, improving access to essential medicines in developing countries and underserved areas, and strengthening the capacity of health partners and systems to help prevent disease and to diagnose serious diseases early, when treatments are generally less expensive and more effective.

Pfizer has joined an innovative public-private partnership to eliminate or control 10 neglected tropical diseases by 2020. Partners include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the governments of the U.S., U.K. and U.A.E., the World Bank, the WHO and other leading global health organizations, and more than a dozen leading pharmaceutical companies. As part of our contribution, we have committed to continue donating azithromycin until at least 2020, in the fight to combat trachoma, the leading cause of blindness in the developing world. We are also donating the drug and placebo to a study on the reduction in mortality of children treated with azithromycin.