Eli Lilly’s Merseyside staff join worldwide walk of hope

May 16 2008 by Alistair Houghton, Liverpool Daily Post

Eli Lilly’s Merseyside staff join worldwide walk of hope

MORE than 200 staff at drug giant Eli Lilly’s Speke plant have joined a worldwide charity walk to raise money to fight tuberculosis.

The staff are taking part in a Transfer of Hope walk, which started at sundown in New Zealand and continued across 48 Eli Lilly plants in more than 35 countries until sundown in the western United States.

The Speke site produces the drug Capastat, one of few available to treat multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB).

Every year, some 2m people die from TB and around 450,000 people will develop MDR-TB, which is more difficult and expensive to treat.

Lilly’s global MDR-TB partnership, which it has backed with more than £60m in donations, medication and technology, aims to tackle the disease.

Julie Stanley, of Eli Lilly, in Speke said: “While our walk is a little less exotic than our Chinese colleagues who are walking the Great Wall of China, the company globally has pledged money per employee mile to support TB charities up to a grand total of £25,000.”