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Media Release

Basel, 31 March 2004

Roche expands reporting on sustainability
Media conference on sustainability includes focus on global access to Roche products

At a conference held in Basel today, Roche has briefed the media on its efforts to promote sustainable development. The Group’s year-end reporting for 2003 for the first time includes a separate sustainability report in addition to an annual report on Roche’s financial and operating performance. In devoting a separate report to sustainability, Roche is underscoring its belief that long-term success requires businesses to operate in ways that are not only economically, but also socially and environmentally sustainable. Roche’s sustainability report follows the guidelines issued by the Global Reporting Initiative, a multi-stakeholder initiative that works in close partnership with various United Nations programmes.

Roche Chairman and CEO Franz B. Humer said: “While the term ‘sustainability’ may be relatively new at Roche, it stands for values that have long been a daily part of the way we do business. Since the company’s founding over a century ago, the principle of sustainability has consistently guided our dual commitment to responsible corporate behaviour and to innovating healthcare. Our commitment to discovering and developing novel healthcare solutions, despite the substantial commercial risks facing the research-based healthcare industry, is, and will continue to be, our most important contribution to society. Our expanded reporting on sustainability at Roche serves our own needs to critically review the progress we have made to date and at the same time responds to a growing public interest in such information. Our new sustainability report, which will be published annually, creates transparency and will help spur further progress.”

Financial success is an indispensable part of Roche’s corporate sustainability strategy. Last year, the Group’s very strong business performance enabled it to create roughly 2000 new jobs worldwide in its core Pharmaceuticals and Diagnostics Divisions. About 28% of sales revenues — a sum of over 8.2 billion Swiss francs — went to the Group’s approximately 65,000 employees in the form of salaries, pension contributions and social security contributions. And the public sector, too, benefits from Roche’s commercial success. Last year, the Group paid income taxes totalling roughly 1.5 billion Swiss francs. Moreover, in 2003 alone, Roche invested over 4.5 billion Swiss francs in research and development activities that will drive future growth, enabling the Group to continue to provide attractive employment opportunities, pay a reasonable return to its investors and remain an active and generous corporate citizen.

Healthcare in the developing world has been a major focus of today’s sustainability conference. To ensure the best possible access to all its medicines, Roche has adopted a straightforward and transparent policy on patents and pricing. Roche will not file any patents in the world’s least developed countries (as defined by the UN) — this applies to all disease areas. Nor will Roche take legal action in these countries to enforce existing patents or patent rights it acquires through licensing agreements. To facilitate access to life-saving anti-HIV and AIDS medicines for those most urgently in need of them, Roche has additionally pledged that it will not file patent applications for new antiretrovirals in sub-Saharan Africa and will not take legal action against the manufacturers of generic versions of antiretroviral medicines for which Roche owns the patent or has licensed-in patent rights. Moreover, Roche has adopted a non-profit policy on sales of its protease inhibitors in the world's least developed countries and in sub-Saharan Africa; this means that the prices of these medicines are based on the cost of Roche Basel.

At the conference, Roche also discussed its increased financial support for the Phelophepa project in South Africa. ‘Phelophepa’ (a combination of Tswana and Sotho words meaning ‘good clean health’) is the name of a clinic on rails that has been bringing healthcare to people in rural South African communities since 1994. The world’s first and only train of its kind, Phelophepa also plays an important role in educating and raising awareness about health-related issues. So far, it has reached about one million people. Roche has supported Phelophepa from the very beginning and is now the project’s largest corporate sponsor. The health train consists of 16 coaches, weighs 600 tonnes and is fully equipped to provide general medical services and dental and psychological care. The additional funding pledged by Roche in late 2003 will be used to expand the range of services offered by Phelophepa. The train will soon include a diabetes unit and an oncology unit, and medical services for school children will be further improved.

Roche’s progress in the areas of safety and environmental protection has been a second focus of the sustainability conference. Since it began reporting on its safety and environmental protection activities 12 years ago, Roche has achieved significant reductions in energy consumption, water and air emissions (for instance, emissions of CO2) and waste generation. During this period there has also been a decline in the number and severity of accidents. Roche’s eco-efficiency rate, a summary measure that relates all key safety and environmental performance metrics to financial figures such as sales and specific expenditures on environmental protection, has improved markedly over the past decade. Since 1992, Roche’s eco-efficiency rate has risen by a factor of six.

About Roche
Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is one of the world’s leading innovation-driven healthcare groups. Its core businesses are pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Roche is number one in the global diagnostics market, the leading supplier of pharmaceuticals for cancer and a leader in virology and transplantation medicine. As a supplier of products and services for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease, the Group contributes on a broad range of fronts to improving people’s health and quality of life. Roche employs roughly 65,000 people in 150 countries. The Group has alliances and research and development agreements with numerous partners, including majority ownership interests in Genentech and Chugai.

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