Health
Medtronic’s commitment to ensuring that people receive quality healthcare is vital in a world where the human and economic impact of chronic disease continues to intensify. Chronic diseases account for approximately 35 million deaths annually worldwide, 80 percent of which occur in low- and middle-income countries and are concentrated among the poor, accordingt o the World Health Organization.
With expertise in treating a range of chronic illnesses – including heart disease and diabetes, two of the four leading chronic illnesses globally – Medtronic has the ability to significantly decrease the number of lives affected by or lost to these conditions. The Medtronic Foundation supports these efforts through global health-related grant programs.
The Medtronic Foundation breaks down barriers to quality healthcare through MedLink grants that provide education and training opportunities for healthcare professionals and finance building infrastructure development in emerging regions and select countries with critical health needs. (See case study below)
Our Patient Link grants support patient-driven organizations in Canada, Europe, Japan, the United States, and selected developing countries that improve the lives of people with chronic disease through education and advocacy. In fiscal year 2010, we instituted a Grantee Disclosure Policy to ensure the transparency of our grants to U.S. patient associations.
HeartRescue is designed to increase survival rates from sudden cardiac arrest, the leading cause of death in the United States, by supporting school- and web-based emergency response, CPR, and automated defibrillator education programs. These efforts increase the number of bystanders throughout the community trained in lifesaving techniques.
Medtronic CommunityLink:Health grants, awarded by employee-led grantmaking committees, address specific healthcare needs of underserved people in the communities where we have a significant presence of employees.
In addition, Medtronic escalated product donations in fiscal year 2010 by connecting our businesses with nonprofits fulfilling unmet needs in communities around the world. For example, Medtronic donated nearly $900,000 worth of Medtronic CardioVascular and Spine products to Hospital Sisters Mission Outreach to treat victims of the Haitian earthquake and provided pacemakers for patients in South America suffering from Chagas Disease through Solidarity Bridge. Overall, product donations nearly tripled, increasing by 165 percent to $18 million.
Addressing Urgent Need for Diabetes Healthcare Specialists in India
Home to 20 percent of the world’s diabetes population, India is hard-pressed to serve an estimated 50 million patients with just 6,000 diabetes specialists. “My rough guess is that we need at least five to 10 times this number,” states Dr. V. Mohan, a leading endocrinologist in India and founder of the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation (MDRF) in Chennai.
The burden of diabetes is a massive public health problem in India, which is intensified by inconsistencies in the level of care countrywide and an overall shortage of professionals trained to treat the disease and its chronic complications.
Dr. V. Mohan
Dr. V. Mohan and his wife Dr. M. Rema founded MDRF in 1996 to provide much needed diabetes education to healthcare professionals. More recently, he established Dr. Mohan’s Diabetes Education Academy to facilitate the process.
“Our long term goal is to provide high quality education not only to produce diabetologists for India but also diabetes educators, ophthalmologists, podiatrists and other para-medical people and thus fulfill a long-felt need for quality diabetes care,” he states.
This year, a Medtronic Foundation MedLink grant to MDRF funded diabetes fellowships for 20 physicians and two ophthalmologists. MedLink funds also supported 17 students who completed certified diabetes educator or diabetes-related nurse and technician courses.
MDRF is a division of Dr. Mohan’s Diabetes Specialties Centre (DMDSC), a chain of diabetes centers and hospitals across southern India which is home to one of the world’s largest diabetes e-record systems. Dr. Mohan is mining valuable data from the DMDSC on the incidence, prevalence and cause of diabetes and its complications. “With such large numbers, we also have the capability to get information on rarer forms of diabetes which smaller clinics may not be able to get,” he notes.
DMDSC is a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Noncommunicable Diseases Prevention and Control and an International Diabetes Federation (IDF) Centre of Education.