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Health Disparities Product Donations Worldwide

Bristol-Myers Squibb has a long history of partnering with designated non-governmental organizations, donating medical products to support long term health care programs in developing countries as well as addressing immediate needs to provide emergency health care disaster relief. Through its Product Donations program, it addresses health disparities and community infrastructure building alongside other Foundation and company charitable contributions programs. As a result, during the past five years, Bristol-Myers Squibb has donated nearly $260 million of medical products, valued at wholesale, to support partner programs throughout the world.

Our donations programs have reached more than 100 countries. These partnership efforts usually are undertaken in collaboration with national Ministries of Health and local non-governmental community organizations. Among other important objectives, the program supports community-based health education and outreach programs aimed at enhancing health care access and prevention, training physicians and health care workers and providing tools for economic empowerment. Most important, health care product donations are important elements in wider-ranging programs to address health care needs at the community level in resource-limited settings and often with populations who themselves have limited access to comprehensive health care.

Some programs that Bristol-Myers Squibb product donations support address local infrastructure needs to get the medicine to remote locations and to administer medicines appropriately. Others support capacity building efforts that result in healthier and more self-sufficient communities.

All programs ultimately target improving health outcomes at the community level and provide community mobilization and supportive services to achieve better health in areas of great need.

There are three main areas where the company's donations of products are used:

  • Medical Mission Boxes: An innovative Medical Mission Box program, in partnership with Direct Relief International, supplies health care products in parcels that can be carried by individual physicians to remote locations to treat indigent local populations.
  • Health Care Infrastructure Support: A wide-ranging program uses product donations in partnership with nine major international NGOs as critical elements in support of a wide range of community-based health care infrastructure initiatives operated by these organizations in regions around the world.
  • Disaster Relief: A third effort is focused solely on supplying needed medicines and other health care products following major disasters; either natural or man made, in order to offer disaster relief immediately.