In the early 1970s, the President of the Republic of Gabon, HE Omar Bongo Ondimba, expressed the wish to see the establishment of a medical research center, intended primarily to improve human fertility in his country. This desire culminated in 1974 with the joint decision of the Gabonese presidency and the president of the oil company Elf Aquitaine, under the aegis of a Patronage Committee headed by Professor Robert Debré, the world's leading expert in medicine. a Scientific Council chaired by Professor Emile E. Beaulieu, to set up a medical research center in Franceville, in Haut-Ogooué, in a favorable environment.

During this period of development and in parallel, he was engaged from 1975, an epidemiological survey bringing together researchers and clinicians, on fertility in Eastern Gabon, with 875 men and 673 women, an exceptional sample - by the number of individuals examined, and because men had agreed to lend themselves to it. 23 other research projects, including 18 on fertility, were also completed.

The project culminated on 5 December 1979 with the inauguration of the International Center for Medical Research of Franceville (CIRMF) - chaired by the President of the Republic of Gabon, Mr. Omar Bongo Ondimba - a remarkable research organization established in the interior of Central Africa, endowed with the most advanced material and technical means existing in the world at the time; followed by the first Libreville Medical Days. In fact, since its opening, the CIRMF laboratories, which occupied 2000 m2 of premises, included five research divisions: Microbiology, Immunology, Anatomical Pathology and Reproductive Biology; plus a laboratory of biological examinations. Finally, was added to these means a Primatology Center for the study of great apes and their diseases close to those of man. This combination of technological and naturalistic means was a unique originality.