[Portraits] The Tulipe association (Transfert d’Urgence de l’Industrie Pharmaceutique) celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2022. Each month, we invite you to discover the people who are committed to the association. Staff, volunteers, members of the Board of Directors, member healthcare companies or NGOs: thanks to them, the association has been carrying out its mission of emergency medical response for populations in distress for 40 years. Today’s profile is of Mohammed Aidouni, a logistician with Tulipe for 27 years.
One of Tulipe’s living memories, Mohammed has worked as the association’s logistician since 1995. It’s an essential job that involves, as he explains, “unloading lorries delivering donations from health companies, as well as carrying out inventories and recording arrivals of health products and medicines in the software”. After that, with other members of the association, he prepares the pallets of donations. “It’s important to give the associations as much information as possible about the goods, for example the weight, size, height, etc.” And when the association is ready to receive the goods, the pallet is packed. And when the association is ready to collect its donation “it sends a lorry and we load it here”, he explains.
Mohammed Aidouni, logistician for 27 years with the Tulipe association
A first emergency during the Tsunami in Asia
When Mohammed talks about his work and his commitment, his face lights up. Memories come flooding back. The most vivid are the memories of his participation in three of Tulipe’s most important humanitarian missions abroad. The first was when a tsunami struck part of Asia in 2004. Tulipe was heavily involved at the time: “It was my first emergency, and all the laboratories sent us medicines. We hired a plane to load all the products and left for a fortnight. Our team, made up of two pharmacists and a supervisor, then rented premises and set up a warehouse to distribute the health products to the associations. I was in charge of the logistics: the associations would come to us and express their needs, and we would respond as best we could.
Mission in Haiti after the earthquake
After this first mission abroad, Mohammed took part in Tulipe’s intervention in Haiti in 2010. An earthquake in Haiti killed nearly 300,000 people and injured just as many, destroying the infrastructure of one of the world’s poorest countries. In a matter of hours, Tulipe provided kits to emergency NGOs on the ground.
A week later, the association chartered a plane loaded with medicines and medical devices for use by NGOs covering the disaster. When they arrived on the ground, 20 tonnes of health products were already there, enabling the action to start immediately. “The health companies had chartered a cargo plane and we transported all the medical supplies to the Dominican Republic because there was no longer an airport in Port aux Princes. But before the medicines arrived, we met an association at the hotel with which we still work: Aide Médicale International (now Première Urgence Internationale). That’s when the partnership was formed. They took the medicines and sent them to Haiti”, Mohammed recalls.
Mohammed (pictured here in the Association’s warehouse) has been involved in three major missions: Asia during the Tsunami in 2004, Haiti after the earthquake in 2010 and the operation carried out with AMDAM in 2012 in Morocco.
Volunteer during a large-scale humanitarian operation
His third mission was as a volunteer. In 2012, a large-scale humanitarian operation was carried out in Morocco by the Association Médicale d’Aide au Développement entre l’Auvergne et le Maroc (AMDAM). Over 9,000 medical consultations and 460 surgical operations were carried out. A tonne of medicines and 10 tonnes of medical equipment were also distributed. “They offered us the chance to work in the field for a fortnight with around forty health workers, all volunteers. I was one of the volunteers representing the Tulipe association and I took with me canteens of health products. We were about twenty kilometres from Marrakech, in a town in the Atlas Mountains. There we had a room in a hospital where we had set up all our kits with the pharmacist in charge of the association. The beneficiaries went to the doctor, who wrote them a prescription, and then they came to see us to collect the medicines”.
War in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic
In 27 years, Mohammed has been involved in the association’s historic interventions in a number of crises. However, he had never experienced such intense mobilisation as inUkraine: “It was a real surprise during the first days of the war. Especially as there were no volunteers at the very beginning. Donations and pallets of medical equipment poured in and we had to send them out urgently”. This emergency came on the heels of another exceptional event: the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic also disrupted his day-to-day life, with operations coming to a standstill: “We were closed for around two months during the first lockdown. Then came the second lockdown… I asked to go back to work, because, as I was often alone in the warehouse, the risk of contamination was low… But our activities had come to a halt”.
A player in, but also a witness to, the Tulipe story
When I started out, it was a nurse who managed everything, and there wasn’t yet a pharmacist responsible for validating medicines. I’ve also seen the association become more independent, in particular by having its own premises. Another thing that has changed is the health product kits: until the early 2000s, we used cardboard boxes, but now we use metal canteens”. These famous metal canteens, painted blue, have become the symbol of the Tulipe association. They are unmistakeable and allow medical products to be transported safely and securely, regardless of the climatic conditions or the way in which they are delivered.
A vocation born with the association
“Working for Tulipe is like being infected with the humanitarian virus, which stays with you for life. I’m proud to work here. It was here that I discovered humanitarian work and it instilled in me certain values such as earning a living by serving others. I opened my little association with the intention of continuing to work there after I retire. I set it up in Souahlia, my home village in Algeria. The aim of Solidarité SOUAHLIA is to help people in need by providing them with clothing, food and medical assistance,” concludes Mohammed.
