Alain Mérieux receives the Chinese Government Friendship Award at the Great Hall of the People on September 29. Photo: Courtesy of Fondation Mérieux

Alain Mérieux, the president of Fondation Mérieux, was awarded with the Chinese Government Friendship Award on September 29 for his contribution to China's healthcare service over the past 36 years.

The Friendship Award is given only to foreign experts who are considered to have made an outstanding contribution in the progress of modernizing China.

Through Fondation Mérieux, a France-based organization dedicated to the prevention and control of infectious diseases in developing countries, Mérieux has made a significant contribution to the bilateral cooperation in healthcare between China and France.

Mérieux has helped lead his family's foundation since his father founded it in 1967. In addition to this, Mérieux is also president of Institut Mérieux, a bio-industrial group comprising five companies dedicated to global public health-BioMérieux, Transgene, Mérieux NutriSciences, ABL Inc. and Mérieux Développement.

Mérieux's active connection with China dates back 36 years, when he first visited China as the president of Institut Mérieux. During that trip, he introduced the foundation's vaccine products to the Chinese government for the first time, and received a warm welcome from the officials of the Ministry of Agriculture.

Mérieux's initial visit set the groundwork for ties with the Chinese market, establishing several cooperative healthcare terms that would be signed between the government and the foundation in the following years. In 1992, BioMérieux established a Chinese subsidiary, with the headquarters in Shanghai and five regional offices.

While other foreign health companies struggle to establish themselves in the Chinese market, BioMérieux are decades ahead of their counterparts, demonstrated by their 26 percent increase in sales in 2010.

A pioneer in their field, the company has collaborated with numerous Chinese institutions and companies, including cooperation projects with the Chinese Ministry of Health in prevention and control of tuberculosis, the first of its kind ever signed by the Chinese government with a private company.

The foundation is currently building a P4 laboratory in Wuhan, Hubei Province, which is expected to be in use by 2015. The laboratory is labeled as the first high-security biosafety laboratory built to tackle Class 4 pathogens (P4), a virus that poses a high risk of person-to-person transmission such as those that cause haemorrhagic fevers like Ebola.

As a joint project, both the French bio-industrial firm Institut Mérieux and the Chinese Academy of Sciences are involved in the laboratory. Mérieux will make the laboratory available to Chinese experts once completed.

Through the efforts of Mérieux, BioMérieux China now has more than 100 employees and a large network of distributors. Its products are well adapted to the Chinese market, where there are significant needs for infectious disease diagnosis and treatment.