COVID-19: SMEs in Kenya set to benefit from Sh63.9m relief fund

A Global Support Program has been set up to bring more financial relief, protective materials and medicine donations to healthcare institutions and communities in need around the world.

Boehringer Ingelheim, one of the largest pharmaceuticals in the world, has stepped up its support to the fight against Covid-19.

Local social enterprises are expected to receive EUR555,000 an equivalent of Sh63.9 million in support of their programmes in Kenya. Some of the beneficiaries of this fund include local enterprises such as Access Afya, Healthy Entrepreneurs and Jacaranda Health.

“As a pharmaceuticals company, we feel a strong commitment to offer our help to patients, and to those who help them”, said Hubertus von Baumbach, Chairman of the Board of Managing Directors. 

“Many of our employees want to participate in the program: we offer support through donations and paid-leave volunteering, engage in significant scientific projects and bring relief to communities in developing regions in Kenya and India, with whom we have a decade-long relationship. All this, plus the drive that I see with colleagues to ensure continued production of medicines, is dedicated to the many, many people who suffer from COVID-19. Our thoughts are with them and their loved ones.”

A Sh63.9 million relief fund has been launched to support the global Making More Health (MMH) network of social entrepreneurs in Kenya and India, as well as the communities in which they live and work. 

The fund will help social enterprises and their activities to sustain a longer period of low economic activity and will invest in social entrepreneurial ideas that can help reduce the risk of the Corona virus spreading.

“Especially in times like these Social Entrepreneurs around the world are well placed to leverage their proximity to those in needs”, said Jean Scheftsik de Szolnok, member of the Board of Managing Directors and one of the founders of the MMH movement.

“MMH communities such as self-help groups in India or people suffering from albinism in Kenya, have started to produce soap and at the same time education programs on hygiene awareness in their neighborhoods.”

Over the past years more than 750 students at the MMH school and some 1,000 families in farmer cooperatives have been trained in hygiene and soap production in Kenya and India.

Boehringer Ingelheim initially started a EUR1 million donations program in January for affected regions in China. With the Corona virus spreading to become a global pandemic, efforts to provide relief and scientific support grew strongly these past few weeks. This ultimately resulted in a Global Support Program with four focus areas: Donations, Research for COVID-19 Therapies, Volunteering and Making More Health Relief Fund.

The firm has made available EUR5.8 million for financial and in-kind donations for local emergency aid across its markets. This includes, protective masks, disinfectants, inhalers and medicines. The company is also working with local organizations that use financial and medicine donations to organize help for patients in their communities 

Since January, a growing team of more than 100 highly engaged scientists from all areas of research and development (R&D) have contributed to projects aimed at finding potential treatment solutions for COVID-19.

“All of us are thinking about how we can find new ways to tackle this virus. This has led to a broad program pursuing many approaches in parallel”, says Dr Cyrille Kuhn, Executive Director Research, who leads Boehringer Ingelheim’s COVID-19 efforts since January. 

Moreover, an increasing number of collaboration partners and service providers is bolstering the team’s efforts. Most of the projects are part of larger collaborative efforts with academia, biotech and other pharma companies. Among them is a call by the Innovative Medicines Initiative of the EU (IMI), to which Boehringer Ingelheim is planning to commit in excess of 11,000 work hours in R&D.

The company also joined the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation COVID-19 Therapeutic Accelerator. It supports scientists worldwide with its open innovation portal opnMe.com, which offers 6 anti-viral compounds out of 43 high quality pharmacological tool compounds at no cost for testing of research hypotheses.