By Eugenio La Mesa

(photo)
I just came back from an amazing trip to Bangladesh with Lawrence Faulkner and Pietro Sodani of Cure2Children.

We were able to meet twice with Nobel Laureate Prof. Yunus at the head office of Grameen Bank in Dhaka, and we also visited some hospitals, Thalassemia centres and the Red Crescent (Red Cross).

The story all started with an email  I sent in June 2009 to Prof. Yunus (I didn’t know him), saying that I had read his book “Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism”, that I agreed with his idea of a social business even if I had no idea of how to go about it, and I asked him if we could do something to cure Thalassemia in Bangladesh with Bone Marrow Transplantation, like we are currently doing in Pakistan and  are starting to do in India.

He replied to me the following day saying that he was very interested (I still remember when I read that email, I just couldn’t believe it!) and, after having exchanged several emails, we setup a meeting in Dhaka on August 9-10.

The 2 meetings  were extremely productive, concrete and effective; Prof. Yunus is an extraordinary and visionary leader, and he is very committed to cure Thalassemia in Bangladesh and to raise awareness of this terrible disease, of which he was not aware before receiving my email; we will do our best to help him.

At the beginning of the first meeting, on August 9^th at 3 PM, he entered the room, came toward me, looked in my eyes and we repeatedly shook hands, one of the biggest emotions of my life.

In the second meeting on August 10^th there were also some physicians and an entrepreneur, whose son has Thalassemia; he looked at the 3 of us and said: “I’m a wealthy man, but my biggest wealth is my sons. My hope is in your hands”. What an enormous responsibility for us, I was shocked.

We are now in the planning stages to create a joint venture between Grameen Health Care Trust and Cure2Children as a social business, a no-dividend no-loss company, to do Bone Marrow Transplantation.

The goal is to have a financial self-sustainable company, easily scalable both in Bangladesh and in other countries.

Through prevention and awareness, we also aim to have no newborn Thalassemia within 10-15 years (to give you an idea, today there is about 100,000 children with Thalassemia in Bangladesh and 7,000 new  cases every year).

At the end of the second meeting Prof. Yunus said that he is grateful for our help and  thanks Cure2Children on behalf of the Bangladeshi people .

I proposed that, once Thalassemia wil be defeated, we could establish “The Museum of Thalassemia”, an idea I had after having read in his book, where he says that he wants to have a Museum of Poverty within 2030.
He agreed and we shook hands.

I think it is an honor and a privilege to collaborate with him and his staff, and I feel now a huge responsibility on my shoulders, because there are thousands of human lives involved, mostly young children.

Creating a social business and having the goal for the Museum of Thalassemia are 2 fascinating challenges for me, and I’ll do everything in my power to make them happen.

By the way, he has also signed me a copy of his book.