DHL expands partnership with UNICEF to India and Peru in the fight against child mortality

Bonn, December 1, 2008: DHL has given UNICEF a $ 650,000 grant to fund a three-year pilot project to empower communities to improve child survival rates in 1,000 villages in the Nandurbar district of Maharashtra, India. DHL extends its partnership with UNICEF to include India, along with Kenya and Peru.

Working together with the Government of India, the Government of Maharashtra, NGOs and other partners, UNICEF will use the funds to strengthen the health system. This will include educating villagers in the prevention and treatment of common communicable diseases as well as providing immunizations and micronutrients to infants and young children. The grant from DHL will be used to develop and implement village health and nutrition plans, to set up village information posts and train midwives and other workers.

Along with the municipal and regional government, UNICEF in Peru - supported by DHL funds - is also developing an integrated program against child mortality and chronic malnutrition, including an information campaign on the importance of immunization for children. Hermann Ude, CEO of DHL Global Forwarding and Freight and Board Member of Deutsche Post World Net recently visited the Rosaspata community in the Ayacucho region of Peru to inform himself about the progress of the project. “I wanted to get a real picture of the situation first hand and show my support to the local management and to the entire Group for this endeavor," Ude said. “As a father of three children myself, I can understand how important this is to the local people. As a manager, I am impressed by the organization of the project because it is well implemented within the local community and its culture instead of being brought onto the people from outside.”

In Peru four out of ten Peruvians live in poverty. In regions like Ayacucho, poverty affects 68 percent of the population. The program covers selected municipal districts in the Andean regions of Ayacucho, Apurimac and Amazonas where up to 3,000 pregnant women and up to 7,000 children under age three will receive assistance. The program’s goals by 2010 are to reduce infant mortality by ten percent, to reduce low-weight births, chronic malnutrition and anemia in children under three by ten percent, to increase the immunization rate among children under 18 months to 95 percent and increase birth registration to 90 percent.

In Kenya, another 13 DHL employees have supported the "Malezi Bora" campaign as volunteers, a country-wide education program in Kenya to improve the health of children and mothers. This was carried out by UNICEF in consultation with the Kenyan Ministry of Health in the district of Kwale, located in southern Kenya. The Deutsche Post World Net employees, recruited from all entities and all geographical regions where the company is operating in, visited eight remote villages and assisted local staff to prepare meals for 600 mothers and their children. During the 14-day-visit, about 2,500 children received health services.

Focusing on “Young Child Survival and Development”, all three UNICEF projects – in Peru, Kenya and India – are specifically funded by contributions from DHL and its employees. Both the India and Peru projects are extensions of DHL’s partnership with UNICEF. In September 2006, DHL’s parent company Deutsche Post World Net (DPWN) agreed to provide UNICEF with long-term support in its worldwide fight to reduce child mortality.

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About UNICEF
UNICEF is on the ground in over 150 countries and territories to help children survive and thrive, from early childhood through adolescence. The world’s largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments.