Boehringer Ingelheim starts effort with Global Support Program in combating COVID-19

Boehringer Ingelheim has considerably stepped up its support to combat Covid-19. A Global Support Program has been set up to bring more financial relief, preventive materials and medicine donations to healthcare institutions and communities in need across the globe.

As a pharmaceuticals company, we feel a robust dedication to provide our support to patients, and to those who help them, stated Hubertus von Baumbach, Chairman of the Board of Managing Directors. Many of our workforces want to take part in the program: we provide 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 make sure constant manufacturing of medicines, is committed to the many, more number of people who suffer from COVID-19. Our thoughts are with them and their loved ones.

Boehringer Ingelheim at first started a EUR 1 million donations program in January for affected regions in China. With the Corona virus spreading to become an international disease, efforts to offer relief and scientific support grew strongly these last few weeks. This consequently resulted in a Global Support Program with four focus areas:

Donations

Boehringer Ingelheim has made available EUR 5.8 million for financial and in-kind donations for local emergency support throughout its markets. This includes, for instant, protective masks, disinfectants, inhalers and medicines. The company is also working with local organizations that use financial and medicine donations to organize assist for patients in their communities.

Research for COVID-19 Therapies

From January, a growing team of presently more than 100 highly engaged Boehringer Ingelheim scientists from all areas of research and development (R&D) have contributed to projects targeted at finding potential treatment solutions for COVID-19. All of us are thinking about how we can find new ways to address this virus. This has led to a broad program pursuing many approaches in parallel, stated Dr Cyrille Kuhn, Executive Director Research, who leads Boehringer Ingelheims COVID-19 efforts since January.

Moreover, an increasing number of collaboration partners and service providers are strengthening the teams 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.

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

As this work evolves, the company will commit similar experts from multiple disciplines, as well as increased lab capacity.

Volunteering

In many communities, helping hands from volunteers, for instance with a medical or nursing background, are immediately needed. Boehringer Ingelheim provides all of its 51,000 employees the opportunity to take up to 10 days of paid leave to join approved external organizations as a volunteer to bring COVID-19 relief. Employees who are not able to carry out their work on-site or from home are given the chance to volunteer for longer while paid their regular salaries, until they can continue their work.

Making More Health relief fund

An EUR 580,000 relief fund has been released to aid 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 assist social enterprises and their activities to sustain a longer period of low economic activity and will invest in social entrepreneurial ideas that can help lower the risk of the Corona virus spreading.

Particularly in times like these Social Entrepreneurs across the globe are well placed to leverage their proximity to those in needs, stated 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 manufacture soap and at the same time education programs on hygiene awareness in their neighborhoods.Over the previous 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 is dedicated to the international community and to the well-being of people and animals. As a research-driven company, it started its support activities in January and will proceed to do what it can to deliver a meaningful contribution in the battle against COVID-19. The company continues to support healthcare systems by reliably supplying drugs and through our research.

More information on the variousCOVID-19 initiatives under the Global Support Program are available under:
https://www.boehringer-ingelheim.com/covid-19