The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA) has elected Pfizer’s Ian Read as its new president, succeeding Merck KGaA’s Dr Stefan Oschmann.
Read has served as chairman and chief executive of Pfizer since 2010, having first joined the pharmaceutical giant in 1978 as an operational auditor.
He subsequently held a number of increasingly senior operational positions across Pfizer’s Latin America business, including country manager for Pfizer Brazil and chief financial officer for Pfizer Mexico, before becoming president of Pfizer’s International Pharmaceutical Group with responsibility for Latin America and Canada in 1996.
Read was appointed executive vice president, Europe in 2000, becoming corporate vice president with responsibility for Europe and Canada by 2002.
More recently, Read has served as senior vice president, Pfizer and group president of the worldwide pharmaceutical businesses, overseeing primary care, specialty care, oncology, established products and emerging markets from 2006 to 2010.
In his role as president of the IFPMA, Read will continue the organisation’s work to accelerate access to health in developing countries through its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with particular focus on the industry’s efforts to develop treatments for the recent Ebola and Zika virus outbreaks.
Read commented: “The SDGs recognise that while there is still work to do to reduce the burden of infectious diseases we need to apply this same level of commitment, innovation and focus when it comes to the growing burden of non-communicable diseases.
“The IFPMA has an important role to play and is well positioned to inform the development of public policies that promote solutions to address non-communicable diseases while simultaneously enabling health systems to address the barriers that are preventing access to quality care for everyone”.