A few decades ago, a cancer diagnosis, beyond being discouraging, was a lethal scenario, a scenario full of uncertainty due to the lack of medical tools, treatments, and equipment, both human and technological. Many of the diseases that we know today were not even part of the medical literature, which made it even more difficult to detect and intervene in time to improve the quality of life; and even worse, if we are talking about deciding on the future of a pathology, it was a non-existent luxury.
Changing this has been the commitment of the health sector and we have achieved it successfully, as evidenced by the advances of Merck, which is celebrating its first 65 years in Colombia, firmly believing in the happiness and self-fulfillment of people through medical treatments that they transform an unfortunate opinion into a scenario of hope.
This is how thousands of patients have allowed us to be part of their lives, even from the beginning, making their desire to be parents, to start a family, come true. Today we have accompanied the birth of 5 million children worldwide through innovative, practical and friendly therapies.
As a way to celebrate our anniversary, we have built spaces for knowledge and innovation, which seek to improve the quality of life of patients, bringing the MS Masters Forum to Colombia for the first time, an event that brought together more than 200 specialists in a space of education, knowledge transfer and updating within the framework of the World Multiple Sclerosis Day that is commemorated on May 30.
Through this and other programs, we seek to bring top-quality therapies to people who, after several decades and a pandemic, we believe even more strongly that they are the core of our company and drive us to go one step further.
And it is that we not only understand well-being from an external perspective, aimed at patients and medical teams, we seek to spread well-being from our collaborators, promoting their personal and professional growth far from barriers and very close to diversity, inclusion and empowerment, which translates into the positive effect we have achieved on our more than 170 employees, who in turn have a favorable impact on millions of people.
We cannot ignore that we are facing different challenges at the level of access, coverage and service, but in the same way, we must recognize the joint effort that is being made between the public and private sectors to eliminate barriers and provide a better service.
This, in short, is a constant challenge where science and technology play their best role, and at Merck we strengthen our work to continue creating, improving and prolonging the lives of Colombians.
VALERIA KYSKA
General Manager of Merck for Colombia and Ecuador
