aossa schreef:
Chris Viehbacher op de CC van 29 juli 2009:
EBM : Speaking of vaccines, what is your strategic intent with the recent acquisition of Shantha Biotechnics ? Could you expand on how you would like your vaccine business to evolve in the coming years ? What are the growth levers ?
CV : This was an extremely important acquisition for our company. If you think about countries that often have less than $500 per year per person to spend on health care, there is no better investment than in vaccines. Now, to be able to achieve that potential, you’ve got to have a portfolio of vaccines that are adapted to the infectious diseases that are prevalent in emerging markets, and also to have the production capacity. With the acquisition of Shantha, we enter into a partnership with a Group that has a world-class quality manufacturing facility in India, but, even more importantly, has a portfolio of new vaccines in things like rotavirus, in terms of cholera vaccines, we can probably create in a very short time an new hexavalent paediatric vaccine. So, this is very complementary to the portfolio of vaccines that we already have and will enable us — with these manufacturing capabilities — to really accelerate our growth in a market where the potential is enormous and where, actually, the healthcare benefit of vaccines is very significant as well. So, it’s very much consistent with the vision that we’ve created of a global health company.
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