Recently, at the 2022 Forbes China Women's Forum, Ms. Zhong Chunhua, Senior Vice President of Hansoh Pharma, delivered a keynote speech entitled "Corporate Social Responsibility in the Eyes of Female Decision-Makers", and discussed with the guests how to participate in and lead technological innovation as a female executive to constantly enhance enterprises' competitiveness in sustainable development through ESG governance and bring more ecological and social benefits in the new era.
01 Positive guiding role of female decision-makers
Reportedly, Hansoh Pharma currently has a significant number of highly educated female talents, and especially in executive management and STEM departments (science, technology, engineering and mathematics related departments), the proportion of women is close to half. such a status quo is not a coincidence. At the highest decision-making level of the company - the board of directors, the proportion of female directors headed by the chairman reached 50%. Women in the management team, e.g. at the core-management and decision-making levels, undoubtedly play a positive exemplary and guiding role in attracting and retaining female talents. It can be clearly seen that at Hansoh Pharma, women contribute indispensably to the development of the company with their rich experience and solid technical expertise.
Ms. Zhong Chunhua, Senior Vice President of Hansoh Pharma
Under the influence and guidance of female decision-makers, Hansoh Pharma is committed to building a diversified corporate culture and an equal and inclusive workplace atmosphere with sound systems and policies. For female employees, in addition to guaranteeing their basic rights and interests such as maternity leave, breast-feeding leave, maternity allowance and regular maternity checkups, the company provides independent mother-infant rooms with complete facilities for lactating employees, special commuter bus seats for pregnant employees, and flexible adjustments to the working hours and workload for pregnant, perinatal and lactating employees, so as to help female employees and their families ease their worries. During the International Working Women's Day, the company organizes the selection of female pace-setters and role models to encourage female employees to work hard and enhance their sense of honor and pride so that they can create value for the company while achieving their personal growth.
02 Focus on rare diseases in women
As an innovation-driven pharmaceutical company that actively practices green development, Hansoh Pharma has always incorporated sustainable development into its business philosophy. With a commitment to address clinical needs, the company focuses on major disease treatment fields with broad population coverage and urgent clinical needs such as oncology, anti-infection, CNS diseases, diabetes and autoimmune diseases, striving to meet patients' medical needs and innovate therapeutic solutions with high quality drugs that have outstanding therapeutic advantages. Currently, Hansoh Pharma has obtained approval for six innovative drugs and has over 100 drugs under development. The company has been continuously enriching its R&D pipelines.
Xinyue (inebilizumab injection), the company's sixth innovative drug approved this year, has been granted orphan drug status by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA), and has been granted breakthrough therapy designation (BTD) for the treatment of "adult patients with neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorders (NMOSD) positive for anti-aquaporin-4 (AQP4) antibody". NMOSD is a rare and serious autoimmune disease that attacks the optic nerve, spinal cord and brain stem, leading to blindness and paralysis. It is more common in Asian patients, especially in young adults and women. Currently, inebilizumab is the only approved therapy for NMOSD in the U.S. that has clinically relevant and durable effects in delaying the progression of disability.
The launch of Xinyue will greatly alleviate the plight of these rare disease patients, mostly female patients, who are in urgent need of innovative therapies to improve drug availability and accessibility, and help rare disease patients achieve access to treatment, so that the light of hope can shine on more female patients.
03 Green is the constant basis of sustainable development
In its previously released ESG Report 2021, Hansoh Pharma fully demonstrated its philosophy, practices and achievements in environmental protection, green supply chain and other aspects.
In response to China's carbon peaking by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060 targets, Hansoh Pharma has set three long-term quantitative targets (greenhouse gas emission reduction, energy efficiency and waste gas pollutant reduction targets), and two qualitative targets (water conservation and waste management targets); and has identified the risks and opportunities of climate change, clarified the responsibility for energy conservation and emission reduction, improved the comprehensive utilization of resources and energy, strengthened technological innovation and management, and promoted the establishment of energy conservation and carbon reduction action plans in line with its own situation to drive the company towards the goal of green and sustainable development.
At the same time, the company has established a management by environmental objectives system, incorporated environmental performance into the executive assessment index, focused on addressing global climate change, and systematically identified potential risks in operations, while actively carrying out carbon verification and energy management, promoting energy conservation, emission reduction and low-carbon development through effective energy-saving technology renovation, and continuously improving environmental management capabilities through the comprehensive energy-saving technical upgrading of equipment and facilities, centralized production scheduling, upgrading and transformation of waste gas treatment processes, and construction of new sewage treatment stations; and has expanded its environmental requirements into the supplier management and evaluation standards while ensuring its own compliant discharge of three wastes, and built a green supply chain system.
Through continuous innovation in ESG practice, Hansoh Pharma has won a number of honors including "Green Supply Chain Management Enterprise", "Green Factory" and "Outstanding CSR Program in China's Pharmaceutical Industry". The company has not only achieved improvement in ESG rating by the international authoritative organization MSCI for two consecutive years, but also been included in the HSCEI ESG Index, allowing more investors to see its competitiveness in sustainable development.
Under the global trend towards carbon emission reduction, carbon neutrality and sustainable development, Hansoh Pharma is continuously working to improve the accessibility of innovative drugs while continuously enhancing its sustainability competitiveness through ESG governance, further fulfilling its commitments to patients, employees, investors, and even the whole society and environment, bringing more ecological and social benefits, and helping to promote China's green development to a new level.
