Print（PDF/252KB） Apr. 28, 2020 Sustainability

Donation of Medical Protective Equipment (Face Shields, Masks and Gowns) to Support Measures against Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

We at Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma Co., Ltd. (Head Office: Osaka, Japan; Representative Director, President and CEO: Hiroshi Nomura) would like to express our heartfelt sympathy to those who have been infected with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). We would like to show greatest respect and gratitude to healthcare professionals who are trying hard on the medical frontline. We sincerely hope that this infection will be contained as soon as possible.

Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma announced its decision to donate medical protective equipment (face shields, masks and gowns) to support the resolution of serious shortage of medical protective equipment at healthcare settings due to the expansion of COVID-19.

Currently, medical protective equipment that protects healthcare professionals from infection has been seriously insufficient at healthcare settings, which increases the risk of infection in healthcare professionals and nosocomial infection. Securing the sufficient supply is an urgent task.
Considering these circumstances, we have planned to manufacture 20,000 face shields, and send 1,000～2,000 respectively to 15 prefectures mainly consisting of specified hazard prefectures in the period from the late April to mid-May, 2020, in cooperation with a general plastic manufacturer, Kawamura Kako Co., Ltd. (Head Office: Ibaraki city, Osaka) to support healthcare professionals who test and treat patients infected with COVID-19. Furthermore, we are planning the donation of face shields manufactured by our 3D printers. (These face shields are manufactured based on the open source doyo model (https://github.com/doyodoyo/facesheild), and are used in line with Creative Commons BYSA.)

We have also planned to consign production of masks and gowns to Chinese manufacturers through mediation by Sumitomo Pharmaceuticals (Suzhou) Co., Ltd., our subsidiary in China, procure 200,000 masks and 10,000 gowns, and donate them to local governments in Japan.

We truly hope that our support for measures against the infection will help prevention of infection for healthcare professionals who are fighting on the medical frontline.

Currently, our group is facing various impacts on our business activities such as restriction of information sharing and delay in clinical trials in Japan and other countries and regions. We will further strive to ensure stable supply of our products, promote our business activities while giving the highest priority to the safety of patients, healthcare professionals, and our staff, and conduct our support activities for measures against COVID-19 in countries and regions.

Reference information:

Support activities for measures against COVID-19 conducted by our group

Support for research

• We donated 10 million yen to the Kitasato Institute's Project for COVID-19, which was launched in March 2020 by the Kitasato Institute. This project aims to isolate severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) from specimens of patients affected by COVID-19, to identify clinical candidates for the treatment of this new virus infection speedily through a large-scale screening of approved pharmaceuticals and to save patients' lives.
  https://www.sumitomo-pharma.com/ir/news/pdf/ene20200331.1.pdf (press release dated March 31, 2020)
• We are providing drug substances in response to a request from the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare, to cooperate for the "Basic Screening Plan for Drugs for Coronavirus Disease 2019" at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases.
• We participate, as a collaborator, in "COVID-19 Research Database", a consortium that investigates measures against COVID-19. The consortium aims to provide researchers with free access to medical information database to support researches on COVID-19 in the U.S. Datavant, Inc., a subsidiary of our strategic partner Roivant Sciences Ltd., is also a member of the consortium. Access the URL below for detail of the consortium.
  https://covid19researchdatabase.org/ (COVID-19 Research Database website)

Support activities in the North America

Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc., our subsidiary in the U.S., is engaged in the following activities.

• In the U.S., Sunovion provided a monetary donation for the Center for Disaster Philanthropy (CDP) COVID-19 Response Fund, and medical protective equipment for Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) and the Office of Emergency Management in New Jersey. Sunovion has partnered with its food service vendor to provide food donations and financial support to several organizations.
• In Canada, Sunovion has joined forces with Innovative Medicines Canada to set up a COVID-19 fund.

Support activities in China

• Sumitomo Pharmaceuticals (Suzhou) Co., Ltd., our subsidiary in China, donated RMB 1 million (approximately JPY 15 million) to the Chinese Red Cross Foundation for the prevention and containment of pneumonia caused by infection with the new coronavirus.
  https://www.sumitomo-pharma.com/ir/news/pdf/ene20200129.pdf (press release dated January 29, 2020)

Support activities in the UK

• Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Europe Ltd., our subsidiary in the UK, sends the team members as volunteers to support the activities of the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK, and delivers food donations to a food bank.