Merck & Co., Inc., is a global research-driven pharmaceutical company that discovers, develops, manufactures and markets a broad range of innovative vaccines and medicines to address unmet medical needs. Because of what we do, we recognize that we have special obligations to society. Accordingly, the stated mission of Merck is to provide society with superior products and services by developing innovations and solutions that improve the quality of life and satisfy customer needs, to provide employees with meaningful work and advancement opportunities, and investors with a superior rate of return. Our Company mission and values are reflected in our corporate responsibility approach, which clearly sets out how we see our responsibilities in terms of global health and access to medicines, ethical and sustainable business practices, contribution to scientific advancement, product safety and quality, human rights, good employee relations, environmental stewardship, and returning value to shareholders. We seek to maintain high ethical standards and a culture that values honesty, integrity and transparency in all that we do. Company decisions are driven by what is right for patients.

To manage our performance on these issues better, in 2009, we plan to begin to collect CR data more systematically, using a new electronic data collection system. This system will enable us to improve our data analysis and to identify and address measurement gaps.

In addition, we will continue to report using external indicators that are meaningful to our business. This year, we have used several external guidelines and measurement frameworks to inform the scope of our reporting. These include the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G3 Guidelines¹, the Millennium Development Goals,² the Access to Medicines Index³  and the United Nations Global Compact.⁴ We are pleased to have achieved a reporting level B on the GRI G3 Guidelines, and our self-assessment has been verified by the GRI.

We have published a printed report of our performance in 2008. To reach more people who might also have an interest in our CR performance but for whom the report or website may be too detailed, we have published a CR executive summary. We plan to publish our next CR report in 2010.