Responding to COVID, a Pharma Company's Foundation Backs Health Infrastructure in Africa
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It’s not unusual for a pharmaceutical company’s foundation to focus on global health, but it is unusual to specifically work in communities where the founding company doesn’t do business—especially during COVID-19, when many funders are staying closer to home.
The Astellas Global Health Foundation, the charitable arm of the Japanese multinational pharmaceutical company Astellas, is known for its work in three focus areas: lowering barriers to healthcare, building resilient communities, and providing disaster relief.
Though the company is headquartered in Tokyo, funding is aimed at supporting underserved communities in low- and middle-income countries where it does not have a business or commercial presence. And it takes a tack that not many follow: building healthcare infrastructure. In this often-unsung work, efforts partner with foundational healthcare systems and support the local ownership of interventions.
Three Foundations Become One
The foundation has awarded $5 million in new grants since its founding in 2018, with the merger of three geographically situated philanthropies in the U.S., Europe and Asia-Oceania, which at the time had granted a collective $30 million.
Recently, the foundation announced $2 million in emergency relief focused on improving healthcare infrastructure and COVID-19 training and education in six African nations and the Dominican Republic. Funding will address both the urgent needs of partners working to prevent immediate spread, and the pandemic’s long-term effects.
Vulnerable Populations
The spread of COVID-19 in Africa has been a major concern among the global health community, with experts warning that underdeveloped healthcare systems in several countries could be pushed to the brink as cases grow. Amid calls for increased philanthropic response, we have seen heightened attention from some funders, including the Gates, Rockefeller, and Mastercard foundations, and Bloomberg Philanthropies. The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, in particular, has made significant inroads in structural change.
All told, the work being funded by Astellas is expected to impact more than 725,000 lives in seven countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Sudan and the Dominican Republic.
Support for CARE, the leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty and hunger, will provide community education to combat disinformation and bolster healthcare infrastructure through surveillance, leadership training for women, and providing access to water for sanitation and hygiene in South Sudan and Ethiopia.
Funding for the International Medical Corps will target interventions that reduce COVID-19 morbidity and mortality in Northeast Nigeria, using preventive measures like integrated infection control, case testing and isolation, and increased access to water.
A program run by the Japanese Organization for International Cooperation in Family Planning (JOICFP) will support COVID-19 and sexual and reproductive health education and counseling for women in Ghana.
And support for World Vision, the Christian humanitarian and aid organization that’s best known for working with children and families, will be building capacity in the DRC by training community leaders in the basics of infection prevention and control, and developing hygiene infrastructure.
The foundation also reallocated $525,000 of its support for two existing partners to carry out COVID-19 relief efforts, which it says will impact close to a half-million lives: AMPATH, the Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare, for work addressing urgent needs in Kenya; and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF USA), to provide personal protective equipment to new mothers and families in the Dominican Republic.
Building Infrastructure
Moyra Knight, president of the Astellas Global Health Foundation, says it recognizes that “building inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable infrastructure particularly those in the hardest-to-reach geographies, is critically important to strengthening healthcare.” Its recent pandemic funding sought to “build resilience, reduce exposure and decrease vulnerability.”
The foundation frames its infrastructure work as objectives to meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Work building healthcare centers and mitigating vulnerabilities in underserved communities helps meet SDG 11 on Sustainable Cities and Communities. Rapidly restoring community functions and scaling public health capacity advances SDG 9. Reducing exposure and vulnerability to the pandemic meets the objectives of SDGs 1 and 3. And SDG 3—ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages—is also addressed through the foundation’s efforts to reduce global health risks to prevent avoidable deaths.
