The Merck Executive Board maintains the overall responsibility for our access to health charter and initiatives. Their decisions are informed by the work of Merck’s Access to Health Task Force which includes senior management from all relevant areas of the organization.
To establish a wider-ranging and robust access to medicine policy, Merck’s Access to Health Task Force designs and implements policies and initiatives that address the particular needs of people in developing countries. It is led by the Vice President of Corporate Health Policy & Market Access and reports to the President of Merck Serono, a member of the Merck Executive Board.
Merck interacts with external stakeholders including patient groups, local governments, employees, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), practitioners and peers to inform its decision making.
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In order to ensure professional and transparent conduct in our Pharmaceutical marketing activities, we comply not only with numerous statutory regulations but have also defined our own code of practice, the Merck Pharmaceutical Marketing Best Practices.
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As regards clinical trials, we are committed to complying with all applicable national regulations and requirements, the ICH-Note for guidance on Good Clinical Practice and the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Our clinical trials are performed according to the same high ethical and scientific standards in all countries worldwide.
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More than 30 million people are infected with HIV worldwide. In the course of an HIV infection, CD4 cells indicate the state of the immune system. Patients with a low count of these cells in the blood are at increased risk of opportunistic infections. Merck’s Guava CD4/CD4% Flow Cytometry System is being used to identify and quantify both absolute CD4 T-cell counts and CD4% values in blood samples.
In Zambia, more than one in every seven adults is living with HIV and life expectancy at birth has fallen to just 39 years. Organizations such as the Catholic Relief Services and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation have been purchasing the Guava instruments over the past five years for use by the center for Infectious Diseases Research in Zambia (CIDRZ). By placing these instruments in provincial CDIRZ labs, the status of patient’s immune systems can be monitored locally using the CD4 test as soon as HIV is diagnosed. Based on the experiences of these agencies, Zambia’s Ministry of Health has adopted the Guava CD4/CD4% machine as one of their approved CD4 testing platforms.
Guava systems are ideal for small clinics because the costs and resources needed to conduct the CD4 cell count test used to monitor immune system function in HIV-positive people is low. The system is easy to use and produces results in 45 minutes.
Currently, there are more than 300 Guava systems in use in Sub-Saharan Africa, thereof 35 throughout Zambia.
