Novo Nordisk to increase staff in emerging markets
Hannah Blake
pharmaphorum
Novo Nordisk has announced its plans to expand treatments for diabetes in emerging markets by hiring around 1000 people over the next two years. These emerging markets include Vietnam, Colombia, Egypt, Ukraine, Malaysia and Indonesia.
As the pharmaceutical market in Europe, for example, slows down, the Danish company wants to add more staff in these emerging markets, where growth is increasing rapidly.
Novo Nordisk also wishes to overcome the issue that in some of these countries, diabetics can’t access medication, as there aren’t enough specialists to write prescriptions. To overcome this, the world’s biggest insulin maker aims to locally train at least 10,000 physicians a year.
These plans were announced by Jesper Hoiland, who heads Novo Nordisk’s international operations, at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes conference in Berlin. According to Jesper, sales in Novo Nordisk’s international operations division rose by 19% in the first six months of 2012, accounting for 15% of total revenue.
However, Novo Nordisk isn’t the only pharma company to turn to rapidly growing markets in Asia and Latin America for investments, away from slow-growing markets such as Europe – earlier this week, Sanofi agreed to buy Colombia’s generic drugmaker Genfar.
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Related news:
Novo to Hire 1,000 People in 2 Years in Emerging Markets (Bloomberg)
Novo Nordisk executive reveals plan to hire 1000 people in emerging markets (First Word Pharma)