Sanofi Pasteur wins “Most Impactful Emerging or Global Initiative” for commitment to fighting Dengue Fever
Sanofi Pasteur’s global awareness programme for Dengue Fever, ‘Break Dengue’, was yesterday announced the winner of the ‘Most Impactful Emerging or Global Initiative’ category at the eyeforpharma Barcelona Awards, following a unanimous vote by the panel of international industry experts and patient advocates.
Sir Michael Hirst, International Diabetes Federation with Caroline De Bie, Programs Director, The Synergist ASBL and Karen Batoosingh, Associate BP Dengue Communications, Sanofi Pasteur
The eyeforpharma Barcelona Awards uniquely support pharmaceutical companies who prioritise value for patients and customers.
Break Dengue is a non-profit, open platform to engage with, educate and link together Dengue-fighting initiatives from all over the world into one, centralized hub. After analysing conversations about Dengue on twitter from all over the world, Sanofi contacted the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation about a potential worldwide community. Soon after, 7 supporting partners from both private and public sectors came together to form Break Dengue.
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“What makes Break Dengue unique is the unprecedented level of partnership; coming together as one to fight against a disease against which no prevention or cure currently exists”, said Paul Simms, Chairman of eyeforpharma.
In its first week alone, Break Dengue had over 10,000 Facebook followers, reaching 100,000 after three months. After one year it boasted a quarter of a million followers. The use of social media to connect voices and initiatives from around the globe was what struck the judges the most. Judge Marco Mohowinkel of Janssen Healthcare Innovation commented: “This project has a strong mix of successful ingredients: great concept, smart origination, great leverage of social media, significant reach and strong partnership approach”.
The winning projects were selected from hundreds of initiatives from Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, announced yesterday, 24th March, at the 2nd annual eyeforpharma Barcelona Awards ceremony. The winners were determined by an international judging panel of senior industry experts and patient advocates.
Paul Simms commented last night: “These awards are about encouraging those in pharma who are adding real value to the lives of their customers, through innovative channels. Break Dengue is the perfect example of identifying a need for something bigger in the fight for disease awareness; and demonstrates an ideal model which could be replicated for so many other diseases across the globe”.