Sponsor: Pfizer

Pfizer Ltd. is the world's biggest research-based pharmaceutical company, with the industry's broadest portfolio of pharmaceutical products, strongest R&D capability, and most effective worldwide sales and marketing network. The company's philosophy is to "think globally but act locally."

Pfizer Taiwan, in the 42 years since its establishment, has dedicated itself to making available the most advanced and highest quality pharmaceuticals to help raise the standard of Taiwan's healthcare. But Pfizer's commitment to social improvement is even broader.

Each year the company earmarks a substantial budget to carry out a variety of programs of direct benefit to the community. "The idea of contributing to social betterment is deeply ingrained in our corporate culture," says David Dar-Tzong Lin, Pfizer's country manager. "We are always looking for effective means to use our expertise and our resources to make a difference, whether in big ways or in small."

Some recent examples of Pfizer's community-welfare efforts include:

Sponsorship, in cooperation with the National Association for the Promotion of Community Colleges, of 45 lectures by prominent physicians at 30 different community colleges. The well-attended lectures dealt with 15 topics relating to personal health, including hypertension, lipidemia, arthritis, urological conditions, breast cancer, and infectious diseases.

The donation of five sets of personal computers and related peripheral equipment to the Chuwei Primary School, located near Pfizer's Taiwan headquarters, after a thief broke into the school's computer room and made off with its equipment.

Cooperation with the John Tung Foundation to sponsor a program to encourage mental health in primary school or junior high students by encouraging them to paint drawings expressing their feelings. Many of the paintings were exhibited at the Taipei Main MRT Station at the beginning of this year, and they have also been made into postcards.

Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, with worldwide sales last year of US$45 billion, has shown its long-term commitment to the Taiwan market by beginning construction of a new Pfizer Taiwan headquarters building in Chuwei. "After the new building opens in the middle of 2005," says David Lin, "we'll be even better equipped than before to provide innovative medicines to the domestic pharmaceutical market and to help the people of Taiwan to live a healthier life."