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BMS Foundation Backs Malawi Cervical Cancer Project | Mirage News

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The Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation, an independent charitable organization, has awarded Baylor College of Medicine Global Health $2.25 million for the Comprehensive Cervical Cancer Pilot Initiative in Malawi. Catharine Grimes, president, Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation (BMS Foundation), and Michael B. Mizwa, director, Texas Children’s Global Health Network, Baylor College of Medicine Global Health, and board chair, Baylor Foundation Malawi, signed the agreement at the Area 25 Community Hospital, located outside the capital city of Lilongwe, where the bulk of the initiative’s cervical cancer services will be centered.

Cervical cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death among women in Malawi. The country’s cervical cancer mortality rate of 51.5 deaths per 100,000 women annually is more than twice that observed in other East African countries and about seven times the global average. The World Health Organization (WHO) has established a comprehensive roadmap with specific milestones to accelerate the elimination of cervical cancer as a public health problem by 2030 and beyond. These milestones set by the WHO include:

  • 90% Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccination coverage for girls by age 15;
  • 70% of women screened using a high-performance test by the ages of 35 and 45;
  • 90% of women diagnosed with cervical disease receive appropriate treatment, including providing care for
  • 90% of those with pre-cancerous lesions and ensuring that 90% of women with invasive cancer have access to treatment and palliative care.

“The Comprehensive Cervical Cancer Pilot Initiative will set the stage for a scalable initiative that ultimately will have impact at the national or regional level,” said Dr. Michael Belfort, chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Baylor and obstetrician/gynecologist-in-chief at Texas Children’s. “We are very grateful for the support of the BMS Foundation to make this project a reality with Baylor Foundation Malawi.”

The longstanding public-private partnership (PPP) between Baylor College of Medicine Global Health, Texas Children’s Global Health Network, Baylor College of Medicine Children’s Foundation -Malawi (Baylor Foundation Malawi) and the Government of the Republic of Malawi, as well as collaborating partners, stakeholders and donors, intends to leverage shared resources, knowledge and expertise. Baylor Foundation Malawi also will maximize the BMS Foundation’s grant contributions to Texas Children’s Global HOPE (Hematology-Oncology Pediatric Excellence) in Malawi, maximizing human, clinical, laboratory and pathology resources.

“The Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation is proud to support this public-private partnership with Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital, to bolster local healthcare capacity in Malawi and meet the country’s most pressing public health needs,” Grimes said. “With Malawi facing the highest incidence of cervical cancer in the world, this new grant will build on the infrastructure we have collectively developed to implement impactful, sustainable solutions.”

The Cervical Cancer Initiative will build on the solid PPP foundation laid in Malawi, with aims to develop a sustainable strategy to address the problem of cervical cancer by enhancing and fortifying prevention, screening and treatment services within the catchment of Area 25 Community Hospital and three surrounding health centers. The Area 25 project serves a population of 500,000, handles more than 12,000 antenatal cases and conducts more than 8,000 deliveries annually, supported by Baylor Foundation Malawi and in clinical collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine Global Health and Texas Children’s Global Women’s Health.

Additionally, this three-year project will leverage community-based educational campaigns, high-performance HPV testing and capacity-building for healthcare workers to create a sustainable model for cervical cancer prevention and management.

“We are excited to partner with the BMS Foundation to implement this grant and scale up cervical cancer preventive services for the women of the Area 25 catchment area. We are confident that the reach of this work will excel beyond the borders of Area 25 to the whole nation,” said Dr. Chiweza Chikondi, clinical director of maternal health at Area 25 for Baylor Foundation Malawi.

Baylor Foundation Malawi will serve as the Baylor College of Medicine Global Health and Texas Children’s Global Women’s Health’s implementation partner for the initiative. Since its inception in 2005, Baylor Foundation Malawi has managed more than $158 million in grants, private philanthropy, corporate grants and in-kind resources to support the public-private partnership in Malawi and their main areas of focus – service delivery, healthcare provider training and research.

“This grant speaks to the importance of sustainable partnerships by the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation and capitalizes on the more than $100 million in grants it has made to Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children’s and our Global Network over the past 20-years,” Mizwa said. “Our expected impact will be a clear pathway to a cervical cancer-free Malawi.”

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Science & Technology
Geospatial AI Foundation Model Team Receives NASA Marshall Group Achievement Award

NASA Space Technology

NASA’s science efforts aim to empower scientists with the tools to perform research into our planet and universe. To this end, a collaborative effort between NASA and IBM created an AI geospatial foundation model, which was released as an open-source application in 2024.

Trained on vast amounts of NASA Earth science data, the foundation model can be adapted for Earth science applications such as flood, burn scar, and cropland studies. Tailoring the model for a specific task takes far less data than the original training set, providing an easy path for researchers to perform AI-powered studies.

For their groundbreaking work on this project, the development team behind the foundation model has received the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Group Achievement Award. Their success with the model showcases their commitment to advancing AI and scientific research and will inspire progress in this field for years to come.

The team members from NASA’s Marshall Space Fight Center /IMPACT (Interagency Implementation and Advanced Concepts Team) are:

  • Rahul Ramachandran
  • Manil Maskey
  • Elizabeth Fancher

The team members from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) are:

  • Sujit Roy
  • Ankur Kumar
  • Christopher Phillips
  • Iksha Gurung
  • Muthukumaran Ramasubramanian

The team members from IBM are:

  • Ranjini Bangalore
  • John Barnabas-Moreno
  • Dario Augusto Borges Oliveira
  • Linsong Chu
  • Blair Edwards
  • Paul Fraccaro
  • Carlos Gomes
  • Raghu Ganti
  • Adnan This
  • Johannes Jakubik
  • Levente Klein
  • Devyani Lambhate
  • Gabby Nyirjesy
  • Naomi Simumba
  • Johannes Schmude
  • Mudhakar Srivatsa
  • Harini Srinivasan
  • Daniela Szwarcman
  • Rob Parkin
  • Kommy Weldemariam
  • Campbell Watson
  • Bianca Zadrozny

The team members from Clark University are:

  • Hamed Alemohammad
  • Michael Cecil
  • Steve Li
  • Sam Khallaghi
  • Denys Godwin
  • Maryam Ahmadi
  • Fatemeh Kordi

To learn more about the NASA projects improving accessible science discovery for the benefit of all, visit the Open Science at NASA page.

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Science & Technology
Tony Elumelu Foundation Publicizes tenth Cohort of Entrepreneurship Programme

Technology tamfitronics

– 20,000 Entrepreneurs Funded At some level of Africa

tenth Cohort of the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme Announced

Over 50 enterprise sectors from farming to expertise represented.

20,000 entrepreneurs from 54 worldwide locations across Africa funded in 10 years – doubling normal target.

The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), the leading philanthropy empowering young African entrepreneurs from all 54 African worldwide locations, has introduced the a success entrepreneurs in its tenth likelihood for the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme.
This contemporary cohort brings to 20,000, the kind of young African entrepreneurs who have acquired funding, mentoring, and ability-building give a enhance to from the Foundation, double the preliminary dedication. The Tony Elumelu Foundation has disbursed US$100,000,000 directly to young African entrepreneurs, who have created over 400,000 converse and indirect jobs, contributing very much to Africa’s financial development and trend. 46% of these beneficiaries are ladies folk, reiterating the Foundation’s dedication to gender inclusion and fairness.

Previous entrepreneurs selected across Africa consist of:

Stella Sigana, founding father of Replacement Extinguish Applied sciences from Kenya, produces gas briquettes by changing natural and charcoal waste from slum settlements, and dedicates a share of the revenues to providing education, skills coaching, and job placement for adolescent ladies and youthful ladies folk extinct 18-24. Since her likelihood, Stella has created 12 jobs, generated over $seventy 9,000 in earnings, and recycled over 500 a total lot waste into gas briquettes for cooking. Her enterprise model has additionally empowered a total bunch of ladies folk entrepreneurs in slum settlements in Kenya, enabling them to assemble companies by promoting her merchandise directly to their communities, thus very much rising family earnings and wellbeing.

Very well-known Sounouvou from Benin is the founding father of Exportunity, an e-commerce platform that promotes export alternatives for Africans by connecting producers with merchants. Through Exportunity, Sounouvou has engaged over 750 clients, and constructed a database of 85,000 companies trading with Africa. He has employed 32 other folks.

Nora Chaynane, a Moroccan entrepreneur, and founding father of Shine Location, a socio-academic initiative geared toward bridging the belief gap and guiding students toward the moral occupation route, helps young Moroccans procure technical and interpersonal skills beyond school curriculum necessities. Through Shine Location, Nora has upskilled and capacitised over 2,500 young Moroccans.
Since inception in 2010, the Tony Elumelu Foundation has pioneered an revolutionary capacity to seeding, capacitising and networking young entrepreneurs across Africa. Drawing directly from Founder Tony Elumelu’s entrepreneurial go, the Foundation democratises perfect fortune, spreads opportunity, in a sector agnostic capacity, and has developed a bespoke infrastructure that reaches each and each nation in Africa. The Foundation is driven by our Founder’s philosophy of Africapitalism, which advocates that the inner most sector, particularly entrepreneurs, have to play the pivotal role in Africa’s trend.
The mighty ability of the Foundation to reach entrepreneurs across geographies and sectors has enabled it to behavior revolutionary partnerships with the European Union (EU), United International locations Vogue Programme (UNDP), the International Committee of the Red Execrable (ICRC), the US Authorities via the United States African Vogue Foundation (USADF), the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS), the French Vogue Company (AFD), the German Vogue Finance Establishment (DEG), the German Company for International Cooperation (GIZ), the African Vogue Bank (AfDB), Sèmè City Vogue Company, and Google, with bespoke programmes including focusing on female
empowerment and development in fragile states. Constructing on its contemporary partnership with Sèmè City Vogue Company, the Tony Elumelu Foundation will fund an additional 100 young entrepreneurs from Benin Republic in 2024.
Tony O. Elumelu shared: “As we label a decade of influence, I am immensely happy with the mighty go we now have gotten launched into. Our entrepreneurs symbolize the motive force within the reduction of Africa’s financial transformation, and their resilience, decision, and innovation proceed to encourage us all. The technique forward for our continent is brighter attributable to their efforts.”
As share of the Tony Elumelu Foundation’s dedication to supporting young Africans, the following ongoing alternatives are as we negate start for functions from young entrepreneurs across Africa on TEFConnect:

Females Entrepreneurship For Africa (WE4A), a partnership between the European Union, GIZ and TEF

Aguka Entrepreneurship Programme, a partnership between UNDP and TEF in Rwanda
African entrepreneurs are encouraged to agree to to those initiatives to receive coaching, mentorship, uncover entry to to networks, and funding.
To learn more about the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme “Decade of Impression” please glance here. The success tales of these beneficiaries will even be discovered hereand a full breakdown of the Foundation’s beneficiaries across Africa will even be discovered here. <>

For media inquiries, please contact:
Moyo Awotile
Head, Marketing and marketing & Company Communications
+234-809-975-1482, [email protected]

About the Tony Elumelu Foundation
The Tony Elumelu Foundation is the leading philanthropy empowering a brand contemporary expertise of African entrepreneurs, driving poverty eradication, catalysing job
advent across all 54 African worldwide locations, and rising ladies folk financial empowerment. Since the open of the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme in 2015, the Foundation has supplied uncover entry to to over 1.5 million young Africans on its digital hub, TEFConnect, and disbursed over USD$100 million in converse funding to 20,000 young African ladies folk and males, who have collectively created over 400,000 converse and indirect jobs.

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