Overview from Mazen Darwazah, Vice-chairman

2009 has been a rewarding and productive period for our corporate responsibility (‘CR’) programme. Throughout the year, we have focused on developing a long-term, sustainable strategy, which not only addresses the very real social issues affecting society today but does so in a way that makes sense for our business and reflects the core Hikma values.

Since the company was founded in 1979, we have been committed to honesty, integrity and the highest possible standards in everything we do. We are dedicated to the welfare and education of our employees, committed to the communities in which we work and determined to preserve and protect the environment in which we operate. These principles have guided us for the past 30 years and will continue to do so in the future.
To that end, we have designed a five-year plan taking us from 2010 to 2015.  The plan revolves around two broad themes, wellbeing and education, and four key platforms, our people, our community, our environment and global welfare. These have been chosen specifically because they combine our very real commitment to stakeholders and society with a desire to embed CR into the heart of our business.

Corporate responsibility is and always has been an essential part of the Hikma way.  Strong commitments to our community and the environment have helped to make Hikma what it is today – a highly successful international pharmaceutical company with a reputation for integrity. 

Over the last three years we have sought to formalise our approach to CR to ensure that it is increasingly embedded in the way we conduct business. We began this process in 2006 by creating a group-wide CR programme and introducing an official Hikma Code of Conduct. The following year, we built on that progress and in 2008 established a board-level steering committee and an expanded working committee.

‘We are focused on raising awareness of social, health and environmental issues in our business’

In 2009, we increased the number of CR Champions across the Group. The champions are focused on raising awareness of social, health and environmental issues in our business. In employee and community matters, we gave particular emphasis to four events: the Hikma Global Volunteering Day, ‘You are Hikma’, Hikma’s Day against Breast Cancer and Hikma’s Day against Diabetes. Volunteering is an important part of Hikma’s CR approach and the annual Global Volunteering Day focuses each year on a different healthcare theme. We also spent time in 2009 developing and refining a five year strategy for CR, endorsed and supported by our executive and non-executive board members.