Natural Physical Environment : Sustainability Issues

Natural Physical Environment: Sustainability Issues
Climate change is having a multi-faceted effect on the pharmaceutical industry and Pfizer is no exception. For instance, changes in the climate affect microbial populations and their distribution. Global warming melts the polar ice caps, and causes sea levels to rise. This produces a warmer moist environment, which is a hospitable environment for pathogens to grow. Combine this with flooding, droughts, and food and water shortages and the likely hood of disease outbreaks increases significantly. Subsequently, when climate change causes diseases to spread, the people and domestic animals living in these regions affected need vaccines and medicines produced by companies like Pfizer to recover and sustain their health.
Being unpredictable, climate change presents a current and ongoing future threat. However, mankind’s reliance upon vaccines and medicines to cure and treat diseases ensures long term growth and stability for the Pfizer.
Freshwater scarcity is a threat to the pharmaceutical industry. Flooding contaminates the freshwater supply with contaminants from runoff. Pfizer relies upon large supplies of freshwater in its manufacturing processes. Regrettably, the freshwater supply is also being indirectly contaminated by the pharmaceutical industry. When medicines and vaccines expire, hospitals and patients dispose of them by flushing them down their sewer systems. This contaminated sewage is then dumped into lakes and rivers. This pollution contaminates aquifers and threatens the freshwater supply.
The opportunities for new vaccines and medicines are exponential. Climate change, rising sea levels and subsequent flooding, and water borne pathogens contribute to an increasing d...

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...more for prescription drugs and want more treatment options from Pfizer. Pfizer also has several drugs in its pipeline that have great potential. Drugs like bapineuzumab, crizotinib,and apixaban are used to treat Alzheimer’s disease, lung cancer, and heart disease. All three of these drugs have huge potential for future growth (Motley Fool, 2010).
Summary of External Factors
Competition from industry rivals is the most significant external factor to Pfizer at the present time and will continue to be in the future as well. As developing markets like China continue to grow its citizen’s health will continue to increase as a primary concern. Consequently, this demographic will demand more specialized medicines and treatments to cure what ails them. The pharmaceutical company that can meet these consumer demands will gain market share and outperform its rivals.