Two important meetings

Last week, two importants meeting took place in Aviesan, Paris.

Sanofi-Aventis

We first met with Sanofi-Aventis to present our initiative and try to match with some projects of their own. Several main points of interest were identified:

• Fever diagnostic: important issue to initiate adequate treatment and to avoid wasting of unnecessary medicines. To measure fever remotely, several technologies have been already designed and are ready to get implemented;
• @-training: the geographic context and the lack of medical staff in these countries led to think about an @-training solution aiming at helping health professional;
• Meningitis testing: Sanofi is developing an easy-to-use kit for the early detection of meningitis.

World Health Organization

WHO (representatives from T.D.R., the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases and from  ‘Innovation, Information, Evidence and Research’), UNESCO (from AU/CPA  Implementation for Science and Technologies), COHRED&GFHR and Aviesan discussed our project through a conference-call aiming at describing our institution, our goals and the progress made the last few months. 

WHO Assistant-DG, Dr Marie-Paul Kieny renewed WHO support and recommended a close interaction with T.D.R. 

The planned action is a meeting in Geneva to discuss over the detailed projects which will be presented by our African partners early September.

Big step forward!

AVIESAN, COHRED, UNESCO and WHO strongly support the Forum!

We are pleased to announce that our initiative got the precious support from several international organizations!

AVIESAN hosts the Institute for Health Technologies and its President, Prof. André Syrota approves this initiative. 

COHRED-GFHR, represented by Carel IJseelmuiden, invited us to join the FORUM 2012 to be held in Cape Town, South Africa in April 2012. Our initiative will be launched in a satellite session at the FORUM 2012 where will  gather the main stakeholders of our initiative and people involved in the tech-transfer projects we are setting up!

UNESCO is also involved and represented by Shamila Nair-Bedouelle who works in "Science policy for sustainable development" division. She is familiar with working in partnership with emerging countries and fully understands their needs in terms of health technologies.

WHO recently joined our initiative and we are now working with them to define our partnership.

How we work

This initiative is based on a partnership between 3 stakholders:

• The technology providers: experts with a strong field experience and in-depth knowledge of actual needs

• Sponsors: representatives of international private/public funding bodies to finance the projects

• Representative of host countries: scientists, academics, civil society representatives, decision-makers from emerging countries where such technologies would be implemented to contribute to improve public health.

"Hosts" countries

So far, several “hosts” countries (most of them in Africa for this first session) are interested in our initiative! We sent them a short questionnaire to better understand their needs as well as the resources already available in their country. We also want to make sure they get support from national organization and authorities.

We are currently working step by step with people willing to host a project.

In the meantime, we are in the process of identifying innovative technologies to match their expectations, set up an equal partnership and build a concrete projects with milestones to find support and funding.

• Benin (Prof Achille Massougbodji)
• Cameroun (Dr Dieudonné Adiogo)
• Gabon (Dr Ayola Akim Adegnika &  Pierre-Blaise Matsiegui)
• Gambia (Dr Tumani Corrah & Martin Antonio)
• Guyana (Dr Shamdeo Persaud)
• Senegal (Prof Mbayang Ndiaye Niang)
• Tanzania (Dr Wen Kilama)
• Trinidad&Tobago (Dr Carlton Jackman)

Launching our blog…

… to support our project and keep everyone posted about the progress made!

This initiative is led by the Institute for Health Technologies of Aviesan in coordination with FORUM 2012. Our common goal is to meet the United Nation Millennium Development Goals through Health Technologies Transfer in the Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs).

The main objective of this new initiative that we want to be sustainable, is to bring together international experts and build concrete projects based on the implementation of new technologies for health in developing countries.

Our final goal is to use pre-existing technologies in the field of nano or micro devices and telehealth to develop where needed. The idea is to get together with the 3 key stakeholders: the technology providers, the local resources where the technology would be developed and the funding bodies who will support the selected project. 

We are in the process of identifying projects which could fit these expectations in order to implement them in Low Income Economies and contribute to improve in concrete ways, public health in these areas.