For 10 years, Total and its corporate foundation working alongside the Institut Pasteur and its International Network in the fight against infectious diseases. A new sponsorship agreement, of EUR 6 million for three years, was signed on 26 January 2015. It will provide funding, for public health and research projects in resource limited countries in order to better understand the therapeutic and vaccine responses in children.
Press release
Paris, January 27, 2015
Pr. Bréchot Christian, President of the Institut Pasteur and Yves Louis Darricarrère, President of Total Foundation, signed January 26, 2015 a new sponsorship agreement of € 6 million, extending for three years, a partnership initiated already 10 years ago.
"The Total corporate Foundation is today one of the main sponsors of the Institut Pasteur and its international network. I am pleased this support is renewed and will enable us to further strengthen the mobilization of our scientists for the benefit of child health in countries with limited resources," says Christian Bréchot.
This new agreement provides funding in the area of infectious diseases, multidisciplinary research projects on the study vaccine and therapeutic responses in children. The projects submitted via a call for proposal, closed on January 25th, will be selected after an evaluation by international experts. "We made the choice to support more ambitious projects than in the past. We hope they will help build multidisciplinary research networks in the South," said Pr. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, Head of Unit of Retroviral Infections at the Institut Pasteur and scientific adviser to the partnership between the Total Foundation - Institut Pasteur for 10 years.
During this decade, 11 research teams from the Institut Pasteur in Paris and twenty field projects could be supported within the framework of this partnership. Today, 13 projects are ongoing in 12 countries in Africa and Asia. For Catherine Ferrant, Managing Director of the Total Foundation, "The projects advance research while sustainably building the local capacity to fight against infectious diseases. This is both the strength and originality of this partnership."
Mainly centered on child health, these programs meet the major challenges of global health: the fight against HIV / AIDS, respiratory infections, tuberculosis, meningitis or antibiotics resistance. Through these research projects, the funding of the Total Foundation helps support the renovation and equipment of laboratories or hospitals and training of researchers, physicians and other local health professional.