Near­ly half of preg­nan­cies world­wide are un­planned, and far too of­ten, women re­ly on “Dr. YouTube” for their in­for­ma­tion on con­tra­cep­tives, Organon’s ex­ec­u­tive VP of ex­ter­nal af­fairs and ESG Ger­a­lyn Rit­ter said.

The Mer­ck spin­out is com­mit­ting $30 mil­lion to change that.

Ger­a­lyn Rit­ter

Organon on Wednes­day un­veiled its three-year “Her Plan is Her Pow­er” ini­tia­tive to sup­port sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive health (SRH) ed­u­ca­tion, ac­cess and in­no­va­tion around the world. That in­cludes the in­au­gur­al launch of a glob­al grants pro­gram and a col­lab­o­ra­tion with UNF­PA, the UN’s sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive health agency.

The ini­tia­tive builds on Organon’s pri­or com­mit­ment to pre­vent 120 mil­lion un­planned preg­nan­cies in some of the world’s least de­vel­oped coun­tries by 2030. And it’s no co­in­ci­dence the an­nounce­ment was made on In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the world isn’t al­ways go­ing in the right di­rec­tion on this pri­or­i­ty. And so we felt like to­day, on In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, now is the time to re­al­ly re­dou­ble our com­mit­ment,” Rit­ter told End­points News. 

Among the first 13 coun­tries to re­ceive grants will be the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, South Ko­rea, Ger­many and Thai­land. The grants will fo­cus on ed­u­ca­tion and ac­cess to health­care. Some of the funds, for ex­am­ple, will be used to cre­ate a dig­i­tal app on sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive health in­for­ma­tion to be used by front­line health­care work­ers around the world, Rit­ter said.

The grants are not one-size-fits-all, she em­pha­sized, adding that “we want to hear what they need and we have the flex­i­bil­i­ty to re­spond where we feel like the need is the great­est, but al­so [where] we can have the great­est im­pact.”

“One hall­mark of the pro­gram is that we re­al­ly want a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the fund­ing to go to com­mu­ni­ty-based pro­grams, com­mu­ni­ty-led pro­grams. We think those are go­ing to have a tremen­dous im­pact,” she said. There will al­so be a prod­uct do­na­tion com­po­nent, though the com­pa­ny’s still ham­mer­ing out the de­tails on that.

Mer­ck an­nounced plans to spin out its women’s health and biosim­i­lar port­fo­lio in­to a new com­pa­ny called Organon back in 2020 as sales were on a downslide. The com­pa­ny’s port­fo­lio boasts a range of con­tra­cep­tives, in­clud­ing the con­tra­cep­tive Nex­planon and the re­mov­able birth con­trol Nu­vaR­ing.

“So many of our em­ploy­ees came to Organon be­cause of our mis­sion,” Rit­ter said. “This is the com­pa­ny walk­ing the talk.”

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”

The FDA today approved Emergent BioSolutions’ Narcan brand naloxone nasal spray for over-the-counter sales. The nod was expected and comes on the heels of a unanimous 19-0 advisory committee vote in favor of approval last month.

The move to OTC means the opioid overdose reversal agent will now be available on grocery, convenience and gas stations shelves, as well as potentially for purchase online.

Microcap biotech Seelos Therapeutics is halting enrollment of its study in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (also known as Machado-Joseph disease) because of “financial considerations,” and in order to focus on other studies, the company said today, adding that the pause would be temporary.

The study will continue with the patients who have already enrolled, and the data from them will be used to decide whether to continue enrolling others in the future.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.