June 2007

The Centre Médical de Secours (CMS), a healthcare clinic, is the most visible manifestation of the health and hygiene initiatives implemented by Total E&P Congo. Open to all Company employees and their families (spouse and children), as well as to pensioners, the center is equipped with X-rays, sonograms, an operating room, laboratory and pharmacy, and provides free health care – ranging from prevention through to inpatient care – to nearly 5,000 people.

This “general hospital” is staffed by a physician, a pediatrician and a surgeon and handles all types of pathology, with malaria ranking as the most common reason for patient visits (1,400 per year) and hospitalizations (500 per year). In early 2005, the CMS began shipping malarial strains to France for evaluation of their resistance to various treatments, in order to adapt its prophylactic strategy and pharmaceutical response. This initiative will benefit not only the patients of the CMS, but more broadly, the population of Pointe-Noire, as the results of laboratory evaluations are shared with the local health authorities.

Indeed, Total E&P Congo strives to extend the impact of its investments in public health beyond the confines of the Company. For example, while the CMS monitors the condition of employees who have tested positive for HIV-AIDS, the subsidiary also grants funding to the outpatient care unit of the Pointe-Noire General Hospital, in partnership with the French chapter of the Red Cross. In addition to subsidizing screening campaigns and covering the cost of treatment, Total decided to emphasize a so-called “mother-and-child” strategy to combat the transmission of the virus from an infected mother to her child.

Waste management

On another front, in line with its efforts to clean up unauthorized dump sites, especially in the neighborhoods of the “African Downtown” of Pointe-Noire, the municipal authorities asked Total E&P Congo for funding to cover the cost of a waste management study. Based on the findings of that study, an international call for tenders will be held to select a partner (or partners) to manage waste collection, sorting, recycling and the safe disposal of hazardous wastes. The project – ambitious and forward-looking – will help improve sanitary conditions in a large part of the city, and thereby play a role in preventing many infections whose spread is currently fanned by the unsanitary conditions of waste dumps.