Eli Lilly opens rep office in Vietnam

July 14, 2014 | 08:00

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US healthcare leader Eli Lilly and Company opened its representative office in Ho Chi Minh City last week.

Vietnam is the company’s eleventh country in Asia. Lilly, which is one of the world’s top ten pharmaceutical companies, received its representative office licence in Vietnam late in 2013, and its employees will join a global team that numbers over 38,000 across 125 offices worldwide.

“These are exciting times for us and an opportunity to bring Lilly’s global promise to ‘unite caring with discovery to make life better’ with people in Vietnam,” said Avraham Raz, chief representative of Lilly Vietnam.

Lilly will focus its global expertise and stellar history on often neglected diabetes and oncology treatments. Lilly was the first company to commercially introduce insulin as a means of treating diabetes and has been developing cancer treatments for over half a century.

Lilly’s vice president and director for Asian Operations Jannie Oosthuizen added “These are areas in which Lilly has an extremely strong history and an extensive commitment to research and development. An unrelenting culture of innovation saw us invest almost $5.3 billion in research and development last year.”

In Vietnam diabetes now affects more than five million people, a number that has grown by an unprecedented 211 per cent in the past decade. In addition, Vietnam also has one of the highest cancer prevalence rates in the world with about 150,000 people diagnosed every year.

By By Hoang Anh

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