Coalition-supported initiative triggers more than $15 million in savings

Today, the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition announces the culmination of a joint initiative with Merck/MSD aimed at increasing access to IMPLANON (etonogestrel implant) by millions of women worldwide. This joint approach was forged between the Coalition and MSD/Merck in June 2011 and has reached fruition, just over a year on, bringing significant savings to reproductive health supplies.
 
Under the initiative, Merck* has made IMPLANON available at its lowest access price in sub-Saharan Africa, and in all other low- and lower middle-income countries with maternal mortality ratios of >200. The joint goal announced by the partners last year at the Coalition’s annual conference in Addis Ababa was to provide 4.5 million units of IMPLANON by December 2012. The culmination of this initiative has triggered a retro-active rebate on the price of IMPLANON. The cost savings of this are more than US $15 million.

This offers an example of a highly successful and innovative public-private partnership that has brought about an ongoing dialogue with key players about how to further enhance affordability and address unmet need.

This groundbreaking development is evidence of the empowering, enabling environment provided by the Coalition. At the July Family Planning Summit in London, Merck/MSD singled out the Coalition’s “neutral platform” on which ongoing historic change to the global RH supplies movement takes place.

“We at the Coalition can only respond to this achievement with excitement,” says Coalition Director John Skibiak. “What began as a vision has snowballed into something that makes a real change in the lives of millions of women in the world’s poorest countries. This is the product of Merck’s commitment coupled with that unique added-value the Coalition brings – the power of partnership.”

*In 2021, Merck spun off several of its divisions into a new company, Organon, which now manufactures and distributes the contraceptive arm implant.

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