Sénégal
Albert Royer Children’s Hospital
Dakar
More than 300 children receive treatment every day thanks to you.
In Senegal and Burkina Faso, we fund hydroxyurea for children with sickle cell disease who would otherwise have no way to afford it.
How we operate
Our model is deliberately simple. We purchase hydroxyurea — preferably generic — and entrust it to our partner hospitals, who handle medical follow-up and distribution to the children in the program.
At first we imported the drug at great cost, in airplane luggage, under humanitarian customs waivers: 120 € per child per year, in countries where the average wage barely exceeds that. Thanks to a generic now produced locally, that cost has been cut threefold — 40 € now covers a full year of treatment.
Families pay nothing. Selection criteria are medical and social: we help children whose families cannot afford the treatment. Some travel several days by bus to collect the treatment at Albert Royer hospital in Dakar.
The entire team — from the board to the volunteer doctors and pharmacists — is unpaid. Overhead is close to zero, which is why we can commit that 100 % of donations directly fund children's treatment.
Our local partners
Our work relies on a network of hospitals and local associations that select the children, track their progress and distribute the treatment.
Burkina Faso
Hospitals & CID
Schiphra and Saint-Camille hospitals in Ouagadougou (Dr Sanou and a referring pediatrician), Bobo-Dioulasso hospital, and the CID — Comité d’initiative contre la drépanocytose.
Behind every number, a face.
These photos were taken at our partner hospitals when treatment was handed over to the children enrolled in the program.
Our ambitions
Scale up our model and treat 1,000 children by 2027.