I’ve been working with the ROW (Rest Of World) Foundation almost from its inception in 2014. This summer we surpassed the $2 million mark in medication and monetary grants to alleviate the suffering caused by epilepsy around the world. As a result, thousands of people in places like Sierra Leone, Haiti, Armenia, Bolivia, Venezuela, and India have new hope for a brighter future.
Since its first grant in June 2015 to the Arabkir Pediatric Hospital in Yerevan, Armenia, to the most recent grant to the Georgian League Against Epilepsy in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, the foundation has made more than 30 grants in more than a dozen countries.
The funds and medications have been provided by ROW’s partner organization, OWP Pharmaceuticals. The medication grants have been in the form of Roweepra®, OWP’s branded generic of levetiracetam, one of the most effective antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) in the world.
Unfortunately this inexpensive medicine isn’t available to the more than 50 million people with epilepsy who live in developing countries because there’s not enough profit for the big drug companies to do business there. That’s not a problem for OWP and ROW. They provide the medication for free in these under-resourced regions.
“I’m disturbed by a world of ‘haves’ with access to life-saving treatments
who withhold them from the ‘have nots’ simply because they lack resources.
We will fight this medical injustice by working to make effective treatments
available to all people, at all times, in all places.”
– Scott Boyer, Founder, OWP Pharmaceuticals and the ROW Foundation
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