AstraZeneca Annual Report and Form 20-F Information 2008

Safety, health and wellbeing

Providing a safe workplace and promoting the health and wellbeing of all our people remains a core priority. A safe, healthy working environment not only benefits employees, it supports our business through improved employee engagement, retention and productivity.

We are committed to ensuring that safety and health risks are understood and managed responsibly. We continue to build on our traditional safety and health programmes, which focus on workplace behaviours and attitudes, whilst developing new approaches to managing stress and helping employees understand their personal health risks.

Wellbeing programmes vary according to health risk profile, function and local culture, and include general health initiatives aimed at increasing exercise levels, reducing smoking, improving nutrition and managing stress. We also have plans in place to deal with the potential threat of pandemic flu, including the provision of anti-virals for employees based in areas where adequate supplies may not be available through national treatment regimes.

Our key performance indicator (KPI) for safety, health and wellbeing combines the frequency rates for accidents resulting in fatal and serious injuries and new cases of occupational illness into one KPI, with an overall target of a 50% reduction in the combined rates by 2010, compared with a 2001/2002 reference point. The overall fatal and serious injury accident rate for AstraZeneca employees decreased by 14% to 2.28 per million hours worked in 2008, whilst the occupational illness rate increased by 5% to 1.04. This equates to a combined reduction of 9% compared to 2007, and we are on track to achieve the targeted reduction by 2010.

We regret that during 2008 there were six fatal accidents, resulting in the deaths of three employees, two sub-contractors and five members of the public. Five of these accidents were vehicle related. Three people were killed in a single vehicle accident in China, two in a single vehicle accident in Saudi Arabia and one person killed in vehicle accidents in the US, Thailand and Egypt. The sixth accident occurred at one of our US sites where two sub-contractors were killed whilst engaged in construction work. Full investigations into the circumstances surrounding these accidents are being carried out.

We work hard to identify the root causes of any serious accident and use a range of investigation procedures to help us avoid repetition. Learning is shared with management and staff, and our conclusions about underlying causes are used to improve our management systems.

With the support of the Executive Vice-President of Operations, a global initiative to share learning from recent accidents and fatalities was implemented during 2008. A learning package was rolled out to employees in Operations and relevant areas of R&D, which focused on involving them in discussions about the root causes of these incidents, and on emphasising the need for everyone to challenge unsafe acts or working conditions.

We remain dissatisfied with our driver safety record and we are determined to improve our performance in this area. Our commitment centres on the promotion of driver safety across our sales forces worldwide, taking into account local conditions and opportunities for improvement.

In the US, where we have a sales force of around 6,500 people, our “Road Scholars” driver safety programme has been in place since 2005 and continues to be a valuable channel for building awareness and improving driver skills. During 2008, we further strengthened commitment and accountability in this area with the inclusion of a driver safety objective in the US performance management framework.

Outside the US, in our International Sales and Marketing Organisation (ISMO), where we have around 17,000 representatives across 61 countries, we are implementing a new driver safety programme, “DriveSuccess”. Whilst taking account of the different driving environments across the various ISMO countries, “DriveSuccess” provides a high-level framework of common standards to be adopted by each country. The framework was rolled out across Europe, Central Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa and Latin America during the last quarter of 2008, and Asia Pacific, including Japan, will follow in 2009.

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