Meeting Health Needs in the Developing World

Since 1958, Project HOPE has worked to make health care available for people around the globe, providing humanitarian assistance through donated medicines, medical supplies and volunteer medical help. It is committed to long-term sustainable health care and its work includes educating health professionals and community health workers, strengthening health systems, fighting diseases such as TB, HIV/AIDS and diabetes.

Project Hope is also acutely aware that non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, cancer, and heart disease are placing an increasing burden on patients, healthcare systems, and economies. According to the World Health Organisation, NCDs account for 63 per cent of global deaths and nearly 80 per cent of deaths in low-to middle-income countries. Yet there are few successful models for NCD treatment and care that currently exist in the developing world. To tackle this situation, Project Hope has questioned how it can engage with corporate volunteers to help in improving global health and also improve their own skills and careers.

This organisation has the ability to unite global health experts from pharmaceutical companies and not-for-profits to solve these health issues. It understands how to engage volunteers from the business world and knows that it is the little things that count, such as volunteers having access to Internet, telephones and transportation as they may well otherwise abandon assignments if they are not able to stay in touch with their families at home and feel safe. Project Hope also appreciates that many of the volunteers may not have travelled outside of the U.S. before and may experience shock and confusion by their initial exposure to impoverished environments.

Therefore, Project Hope's strong relationship with Lilly, a leading pharmaceutical company, which has been going for more than 50 years, has been influential. Lilly recently sponsored the organization's fundraising gala in New York where they together unveiled a new video highlighting their work to improve diabetes and hypertension care for people living in the informal settlement of Zandspruit in Johannesburg, South Africa.

In 2011 Lilly announced an investment of $30 million over five years to create the Lilly NCD Partnership, a signature program designed to research new, comprehensive approaches to treat NCDs in the developing world. Lilly is working with world-class health organisations in Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa, countries that suffer a large burden of NCDs, to develop effective, efficient and sustainable programs that can meaningfully improve outcomes for those in need. Meeting the enormous health needs in the developing world is not glamorous work and it is often anonymous. Project HOPE is the cheerleader that stands on the sidelines to encourage companies like Lilly to change things.

(source: www.justmeans.com)