Citizenship

Our greatest responsibility is to enable people with severe diseases to enjoy normal everyday lives by delivering safe and effective solutions. As well as providing innovative therapies,we are involved in a variety of community programmes aimed at people that suffer from severe diseases.

Creating communities:

Severe diseases tend to be socially stigmatised, making many people with these conditions reluctant to share their experiences. We are creating communities where they can exchange personal insights and coping strategies. For example our non-branded crohnsandme website, which includes tips on diets and travelling, as well as videos from patients and physicians, is a case in point. Our HOPE (Helping Other People with Epilepsy) mentoring programme, which helps to educate people with epilepsy and their care givers about the disease, is another example. Co-developed with the Epilepsy Foundation in the USA, the programme has so far reached over 100 000 people in the USA.

Unlocking patients’ academic potential:

The everyday demands of severe diseases can often interrupt and prolong the education of people with conditions such as epilepsy and Crohn’s disease. To ease this burden,we provide college scholarships of up to US$10 000 for people with Crohn’s disease, epilepsy or rheumatoid arthritis in the USA and Canada. In the USA, we also fund scholarships of care givers of people with epilepsy. In 2007,over 40 people received scholarships.

Providing practical help with the aid of animals:

We support a unique programme, called Canine Assistance,that provides people with epilepsy with dogs that are trained to retrieve a phone prior to a seizure and summon help, among other skills. During 2007, we also funded children with epilepsy to swim with dolphins in the open sea and enjoy a week of aquatic bodyworks.

Enabling patients to decide the types of support we offer:

Our support programme for people with Parkinson’s disease typifies our ‘patient-driven’ approach. In Germany, for example, an online panel of 250 patients advises us on the types of information and support that they and their care givers need. This has led to the creation of quarterly journal, offering advice on nutrition, sport and other issues,as well as an emailed newsletter that provides tips for families on how to deal with the disease.

Educating the public about severe diseases and biomedicine:

UCB is also co-sponsoring a unique new science centre that will connect school children and other members of the public more closely with biomedicine and scientific research. ‘The Centre of the Cell’ in London will be the world’s first science education centre situated in the working research laboratories of a major medical school, the ‘Institute of Cell and Molecular Science at Barts and The London.’We also sponsor a range of academic initiatives, including an academic chair in the Management of Inflammatory Bowel Disease at Leuven University. UCB also signed an academic grant in chronic arthritis with the Rheumatology Department of the University of Ghent.

Going that Extra Mile:

We are sponsoring basic yet vital equipment for a remote village clinic in Uganda, including examination beds and solar panels, enabling the clinic to become self-sufficient.