Happy holidays from Elsevier!

The holiday season has arrived! Rather than purchasing holiday greeting cards, Elsevier has donated our holiday card budget to one of our incredible partners, Epicentre, the training and research arm of Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) or Doctors without Borders. We have established a multi-year partnership with Epicentre focusing on building the capacity of Epicentre Niger’s medical and scientific staff, which reinforces Epicentre’s response to health crises. 

The partnership has enabled Epicentre to support the Ministry of Health of Niger with COVID pandemic response through the creation of the first mobile alert reporting system for the country, safety follow-up of COVID vaccine recipients and increased PCR capacity in the country. Epicentre also helped the Ministry of Public Health in Cameroon to evaluate the performance of diagnostic tests for COVID-19, included in the National Testing strategy for the COVID-19 Response. In addition, the partnership facilitated scientific communication workshops for approximately 150 scientists from Cameroon, Niger, Uganda and Senegal.

Supporting research to combat malnutrition and infectious diseases in Niger

In Niger, infectious diseases and child malnutrition are the principle causes of mortality. In 2009, Epicentre, MSF’s research and training arm, established its third research center in Niger to develop a viable West African hub to develop implementable solutions to clinical and public health problems. Since then, the Niger Research Center has developed a strong research portfolio and built capacity to investigate epidemics, implement alerting and monitoring systems, conduct clinical trials and prevalence surveys while working with Niger’s Ministry of Health and evaluating impact.

However, Niger and the Sahel, remain one of the least developed regions in the world with poor academic, research and health infrastructure. Our partnership supports the training of Epicentre’s African staff with the goal of eventually running the Center autonomously. Key scientific staff such as field investigators, laboratory technicians, epidemiologists and clinical statisticians have received advanced individual and institutional training in technical areas and have been able to present at Epicentre’s Scientific and Medical Days in Paris and Niger, travel for courses and conferences, build their international networks and take up other training assignments in MSF programs and African research centers.However, Niger and the Sahel, remain one of the least developed regions in the world with poor academic, research and health infrastructure. Our partnership supports the training of Epicentre’s African staff with the goal of eventually running the Center autonomously. Key scientific staff such as field investigators, laboratory technicians, epidemiologists and clinical statisticians have received advanced individual and institutional training in technical areas and have been able to present at Epicentre’s Scientific and Medical Days in Paris and Niger, travel for courses and conferences, build their international networks and take up other training assignments in MSF programs and African research centers.

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