With our annual project 2020 we are supporting the “Minilab Project”, an initiative of the Tübingen institute “Difäm – Deutsches Institut für Ärztliche Mission e.V” (German Institute for Medical Mission)

Every year, counterfeit medicines cause harm to many patients, particularly in developing countries. This problem is being tackled by a joint project of the Tübingen-based Difäm and the Ecumenical Pharmaceutical Network (EPN) that aims to detect counterfeit medicines in developing countries with the help of local analytics.

To this end, local centres are provided with a so-called “Minilab”, a compact laboratory the size of a suitcase, to identify medicines that contain no, insufficient or the wrong active ingredients. In addition to the provision of technical hardware and reagents, the training and development of local staff is also financed in order to foster local expertise.

SHS is supporting the project in the Rwandan capital Kigali through a grant to cover investment and training costs.

“We are delighted that, with its donation, SHS is making a concrete contribution to the fight against counterfeit medicines,” says Dr. med. Gisela Schneider, Director of Difäm.

“As we always operate in the life sciences environment in our work, we know how important flawless quality in the pharmaceutical sector is. The SHS employees support the “Minilab Project” with all their hearts as every counterfeit medicine is one too many, because it puts health or even lives at risk,” says Hubertus Leonhardt, managing partner of the Tübingen-based SHS, explaining the decision to support this particular project.