To make our efforts more effective and efficient, we focus our resources on the following activities:
- We are partnering with various organizations to globally eliminate schistosomiasis, an insidious worm disease.
- The Global Pharma Health Fund, a charitable initiative funded by Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, works to fight counterfeit medicines in developing health care systems and emerging countries.
- The Deutsche Philharmonie Merck, sponsored by Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany is the musical ambassador of our company.
The Group function Public Affairs & Corporate Responsibility coordinates and implements the above-mentioned projects, regularly reporting their progress to the Executive Board. Our subsidiaries are also involved locally. Guided by criteria defined at the corporate level, our individual legal entities are given the leeway to choose aid projects that reflect our corporate responsibility ethos.
We conduct annual Group-wide surveys to ascertain the regional scope of our community involvement efforts, to identify our objectives and focus, and to track our progress. In 2015, we invested a total of € 100 million in social responsibility activities, compared to € 50.8 million in 2014.
These figures do not include activities that primarily serve to market our products.