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Merck Sharp & Dohme New Zealand (MSD) and Aventis Pasteur Australia (AVP) have announced that they have reached an agreement in principle under which MSD will be the sole New Zealand distributor of the AVP range of vaccines. MSD will be responsible for the sales, marketing and promotion of the AVP vaccines in the New Zealand market.
With the addition of AVP’s range of vaccines, and together with the Merck vaccines it already markets, MSD now offers a combined range of vaccines to protect against both bacterial and viral diseases – one of the broadest range of vaccines in the New Zealand market.
Most recently, both companies individually secured successful tenders for several public vaccines on the National Immunisation Schedule through to 2005.
MSD’s new portfolio include vaccines for diseases such as polio, tuberculosis, hepatitis A & B, measles mumps and rubella (MMR), pneumococcal, typhoid, yellow fever, rabies, cholera and travellers diarrhoea. Vaccines for yellow fever and rabies are the only vaccines for these diseases currently available in New Zealand.
“This is good news for doctors and travel health specialists who will benefit from the convenience of purchasing vaccines through one source, with the addition of the after sales service and expertise that MSD provides,” said Alister Brown, Managing Director, MSD. “MSD has been managing vaccines for over 12 years in New Zealand and has an established and trained team supporting this area of medicine.” The company also provides a back-up customer care centre (available 24 hours) to handle emergency vaccine supply. “Customers can expect the same excellent level of service and product knowledge from MSD to continue with a broader range of vaccines available,” concluded Mr Brown.
The relationship between the two corporations is long-standing, and both are looking forward to a successful business arrangement in New Zealand. AVP Australia’s Managing Director Jenny Herz said “It’s great news for our customers and their patients. MSD has the level of expertise and trained staff to manage the AVP range and the after sales service to handle queries through its qualified customer care line.”
MSD Managing Director, Alister Brown said “We think our customers will welcome being able to get a much wider range of vaccines from MSD. Our aim is to improve even further the quality of service we put behind our vaccine range – and we believe specialist travel health clinics in particular will benefit from our enlarged vaccine portfolio for travellers.”
As well as the existing broad range of paediatric and adult vaccines, MSD has investigational vaccines in the research pipeline, including vaccines to help prevent rotavirus and herpes zoster (the pain associated with shingles).
This Trans-Tasman partnership between the two companies isn’t the first time the two companies have joined forces. Merck & Co. Inc., (MSD’s parent company based in the U.S.) and Aventis Pasteur (AVP Australia’s parent company based in France) formed a joint venture in 1994, known as Aventis Pasteur MSD, which sells vaccines in 19 countries of Western Europe.
About Aventis Pasteur (AVP)
AVP is the vaccines unit of pharmaceutical company Aventis, with headquarters in Lyon, France. It’s production capacity can meet the needs of people in over 150 countries, including in North America (Canada and the U.S.), Europe, and all developing and emerging countries (80% of the world’s population). The company offers the broadest range of vaccines, providing protection against 20 bacterial and viral diseases.
AVP represents approximately one fourth of the world vaccine market, which amounts to 7 billion Euros.
AVP Australia (established in 1998) is a branch of AVP France and is located in Baulkham Hills, Sydney.
About MSD
Merck & Co., Inc., which operates in many countries as Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD), is a leading research-based pharmaceutical products company that discovers, develops, manufactures and markets a broad range of innovative products to improve human health directly and through its joint ventures.
For more information please contact:
Ron Murray
Merck Sharp & Dohme NZ Ltd
Phone 09 523 6112
Mobile 021 243 9873
Email ron_murray@merck.com
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