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Valencia (EFE).- Farmamundi celebrates 30 years, three decades of pharmaceutical cooperation during which this non-governmental organization has been able to improve the health and quality of life of thirty million people in seventy countries, being present in some of the humanitarian crises most important and allocate 160 million euros to carrying out health projects.
“NGOs always say that our objective is to disappear or not to be, but I am afraid that we will continue to be necessary for many years,” the entity’s director general, Joan Peris Lluch, assures EFE, for whom the “inequalities are so many” that it makes It is necessary to “continue adding efforts and collecting solidarity wills to transform that into effective and efficient aid.”
The entity, which was created in 1993 with the mission of addressing the “worrying reality” that a third of the world’s population lacks access to essential medicines, has reached thirty million people in “complex and difficult” contexts, something that For Peris it is “an achievement” because they have been able to reach very remote regions.
VERTIGO FIGURES
During these thirty years, the entity based in Valencia has carried out 600 cooperation projects, has distributed 2,700 tons of essential medicines and medical supplies in 70 countries, has participated with 311 interventions in the largest humanitarian emergencies, and more than 680,000 people have participated in 1,500 educational actions.
He recalls that currently more than 100 million people have been forced to leave their homes, the highest number recorded in history, and underlines that in three decades they have had the support and solidarity of more than 6,400 pharmacies. “Pharmaceutical solidarity transforms lives and strengthens global health,” they add from the NGO.
160 MILLION EUROS MANAGED
During that time, 160 million euros have been managed, something “very difficult” because, according to Peris, the Spanish administration, from which Farmamundi is financed by more than 70%, is “very demanding, which is fine, but In our contexts, justifying each euro is sometimes a complex task because there is no formal economy”.
“The good news is that we have managed to justify them: not a single euro has been lost and with very high levels of effectiveness and efficiency,” says Peris, who has led the entity since 2017.
He also underlines to EFE the “great team” available to the entity, which continues to have the ten best scores in the calls where more than 100 NGOs attend, and that, he points out, is the result of “enormous teamwork.”
“The circle of our action is to identify the need, get the money, execute it and justify it”, he explains to add: this has allowed Farmamundi to help “improve the health of 30 million people in 30 years, that is our reason of being”.
The NGO has been present in many humanitarian crises, most recently the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and they continue to work in many international emergencies caused by armed conflicts, such as Yemen, or by prolonged crises of long duration and many of them forgotten, as in Kenya.
“There are many people who continue to require health care and basic needs that are not covered and we have to adapt to each of the crises”, whether they are caused by an armed conflict or by natural catastrophes such as earthquakes or hurricanes.
In addition, he stresses that the fact of being a humanitarian warehouse accredited by the European Union makes them “unique in Spain in this regard.” “We have a 700-square-meter warehouse with a permanent stock of medicines and kits made to be very fast, and when there is an international emergency we can leave in 24 hours,” he values.
Thus, through the financing of the Spanish Agency for Cooperation, they were able to send, during the pandemic, more than two million euros in medicines to combat COVID in countries such as Brazil, Bolivia, India, and also in Spain, with the strategic partner to the Spanish Red Cross, one and a half million euros in masks or gloves at a time when Spain had difficulties in differentiating adequate medical supplies from those that were not.
FUTURE OBJECTIVES
Looking to the future “we have many challenges ahead but it is still very necessary to facilitate access to medicines in many countries where they do not have it,” says Peris.
Other objectives are to strengthen primary health care, improve access to drinking water and sanitation, prioritize work with women and girls or the protection of refugees.
The NGO also works with more than 25 universities throughout Spain, where a team of 46 people who do education for development and social transformation from the field of health, work so that young people know the importance of access to health and that in our country “we are privileged to have quality public health”.