Meeting with the Sanofi-Espoir Foundation

We had the pleasure to meet with the Foundation Managing Director and the Partnership Program Senior Manager to present our initiative and the projects we support.

Founded on October 2, 2010, by Sanofi-Aventis Group, the Sanofi Espoir Corporate Foundation is tasked with supporting actions of general interest in the healthcare field on an international scale.

The Foundation's mission is to contribute to reducing health inequalities, particularly among the most needy, by focusing on key issues in prevention, training and access to care.

Talking about health and development with them made us realize how important it is to work on the project construction to come up with strong partnerships between the technology implementation and the local network to be set up around the targeted population.

Sanofi-Espoir Foundation could thus support projects aiming at improving access to healthcare and involving community healthcare people. These projects actually need to follow strict criteria to be considered: see their Guidelines to select projects. Projects involving vaccines or medicines will be be  considered by Sanofi Coporate or Sanofi-Pasteur.

As far as our HTech4Dev Initiative is concerned, two projects might fit in the Foundation scope:

• Cameroon: Anemia and Calcemia monitoring and treatment for adult women in Douala area.

• Senegal: Medical Record System

To allow these projects to meet the Foundation criteria, for each we have established a multi-disciplinary steering committee with 2 clear tasks:
-       helping to identify the best relevant technology;
-       helping to present a solid structure with an active local healthcare network aiming at  facilitating the social acceptance of the new devices.