“When women are healthy, society is healthy,” said Amit Zimerman, the head of the Israeli branch of Organon, a new global health company with a singular focus on women’s health.
The company launched Thursday in the United States as an independent entity and went public on the New York Stock Exchange; it is headquartered in New Jersey. Organon Israel will move into its Kfar Saba offices by next week.
Organon is a Merck & Co. spin-off.
The company has 60 health products already on the market and branches in 140 countries. Some 60% of its international leadership is female. According to Zimerman, women make up 65% of management in Israel.
“There are many companies that focus on women’s health as part of their health portfolio, but none of them are focused only on this,” Zimerman told The Jerusalem Post. “Everything we are doing now and will do in the future will be focused on this goal. This is the vision and where all the money we make is going towards women’s health.”
He noted that “for too long, women have been told to accept many common conditions, such as heavy, painful and irregular menstrual bleeding, incontinence and menopause.”
Organon’s mission is to change this.
“We believe that by identifying diseases earlier and modifying the course of diseases or health conditions, we can improve the quality of life for women at every stage of their lives,” he said.
In Israel, medical care is more readily accessible than in many countries, given the country’s robust socialized medicine program. In some countries, women lack access to fertility and other treatments.
Moreover, according to Zimerman, there are a lot of unmet women’s needs, such as proper treatments for endometriosis, described by the Mayo Clinic as an often-painful disorder in which tissue similar to the tissue that normally lines the inside of the uterus grows outside of it. When women do not get the right treatment, it can cause severe sickness, he said.
Organon has a team focusing on improving access to contraceptive and fertility products, and a comprehensive education and training program to help women and healthcare professionals understand the choices available to them, a release described.
The company is also focused on developing what are known as biosimilars, generic medications that are highly similar to another already approved medicine that can be sold at lower cost.
“Women always take care of everyone else,” Zimerman said. “We want them to take care of themselves.”
Organon is now focused on running a public relations campaign to raise awareness about its brand and to get women to share their most difficult health challenges and concerns with it, to help direct the company’s goals.
On the first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange last Thursday, Organon gathered hundreds of voices from around the world to create the “Wall of Voices” – a multimedia installation outside the exchange. The wall, a release explained, was meant to symbolize the company’s commitment to listening to women.
Quotes and a video from the installation are available at HereForHerHealth.com. Women can still add their voices to the wall via the website.
“We are not launching a new company; we are launching a commitment toward women,” Zimerman said. “We are here to make a change.”