DHL funds 3-way health drive in Maharashtra

The company will fund US$650,000 (Bt22.8 million) for a three-year Unicef project to strengthen health infrastructure. This will include educating villagers on the prevention and treatment of common communicable diseases, providing immunisations and micro-nutrients to infants and young children.

Deutsche Post World Net, DHL's parent company, supports Unicef projects in three regions around the world to improve child survival rates.

The target in 2009 is to raise sufficient funds to vaccinate 50,000 children against the six major preventable child-killer diseases.

The support by DHL is expected to accelerate Unicef's work with the Indian government to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and reduce Nandurbar district's child mortality rate to 41 per 1,000 live births by 2015.

According to the Population Foundation of India, the infant mortality rate in the district was as high as 68 per 1,000 live births in 2001. Maternal mortality is estimated to be above 300 per 100,000 live births.

"We encourage our staff to contribute their time to support Unicef's programme to improve physical infrastructures and improve the quality of life among villagers in the region," said Amadou Diallo, CEO of DHL Global Forwarding South Asia Pacific.

Apart from the support for reducing child mortality, DHL will also provide its logistics know-how to develop the regions on which Unicef is focusing.