Delivering Hope Initiative - Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation
Delivering Hope
The Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation’s Delivering Hope™ initiative focuses on helping communities and healthcare workers in China and India effectively raise awareness, empower providers and inform policy about hepatitis B and hepatitis C.
Each year, nearly 1 million people worldwide die due to hepatitis B or hepatitis C, forms of viral hepatitis that cause liver inflammation and over time can lead to cirrhosis or liver cancer. Hepatitis B is endemic in China and eastern Asia, where most people become infected during childhood. And many of the 150 million people who are chronically infected with hepatitis C live in the Asia Pacific region.
The Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation is committed to improving the health outcomes of these populations disproportionately affected by hepatitis B and hepatitis C. Since 2002, the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation’s Delivering Hope™ initiative has been helping communities and healthcare workers in China and India:
- Effectively raise awareness about the dangers of hepatitis B and hepatitis C
- Inform health policy and national programs
- Build the capacity of healthcare providers and communities to address these diseases
- Promote disease prevention in the hardest-hit and greatest at-risk populations
Delivering Hope has awarded more than $15 million to 50 projects in Asia since 2002. In China alone, more than 8 million people who are at high risk of hepatitis infection have benefitted from these programs over the past decade.
To extend the impact of these projects into the future, in 2013 the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation established three Centers of Excellence to more broadly share successful, innovative and evidence-based practices and more comprehensively address viral hepatitis among vulnerable populations in China and India.
One Center of Excellence is located at the China Foundation for Hepatitis Prevention and Control (CFHPC). The others are in India at the Liver Foundation of West Bengal (LFWB) and at the HOPE Initiative in Uttar Pradesh.
These centers will scale up and replicate evidence-based community interventions developed by previous Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation-funded projects and also inform public policy in liver and metabolic diseases.
Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation Delivering Hope Backgrounder