Emergency Programmes
The programmes for health care and access to drinking water and food benefit more than 231,000 people in the Sahel
Inditex develops emergency plans, to alleviate the negative consequences of natural catastrophes occurring anywhere in the world. This participation at scenes of human crisis is established through the following lines of action:
- Emergency aid: short-term aid, consisting of supplying essential goods and services for immediate survival of victims: mainly water, shelter, medical products and health care.
- Humanitarian aid: long-term support for rehabilitation or reconstruction associated with development.
Humanitarian crisis in the Sahel
Inditex worked with MSF and the Red Cross by providing millions of Euros in funding for various humanitarian projects in the African region of the Sahel, where half the population face situations of extreme poverty and major shortages of health and nutritional material. These projects benefit 231,000 people.
In Mali, where the severe political crisis has forced 300,000 people to flee their homes, Inditex is working on a MSF health project. The project seeks to improve healthcare and increase free access to community health centres, especially for pregnant women and children under 5 years of age. An epidemiological monitoring and health emergency care system will also be implemented.
The collaboration with the Red Cross also extends to two other countries in the region, Burkina Faso and Niger. In the former, the aim of the project is to improve the infrastructures for accessing drinking water in 12 rural communities, as well as distributing basic hygiene kits in refugee camps and to promote community education in this field.
The aid in Niger focusses on increasing the population’s capacity to face problems of access to food, by reinforcing agricultural and livestock production and creating cereal banks. Furthermore, health and hygiene materials are provided to local health centres and food training campaigns are held, especially aimed at reducing child malnutrition problems.
Emergency Unit
Inditex continues to support MSF emergency interventions, by renewing its commitment started in 2011. Inditex finances part of the Emergency Unit structure and its decentralised units in Nairobi (Kenya) and Panama, which facilitate the movement of teams and adapted materials in less than 48 hours in response to any humanitarian crisis in any part of the world.
In 2012, the MSF Emergency Unit attended a total of 8 emergencies: Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Ebola outbreaks), Syria and Mali (armed conflicts), South Sudan (measles epidemic), Somali refugee campes in Ethiopia and Guinea-Bissau (cholera and risk of violence) and Niger (cholera epidemic).
Through this project, the organisation has halted epidemics such as Ebola haemorrhagic fever and helped populations who are victims of armed conflicts in the earliest stages of the conflict in Syria, where the MSF teams continue to provide emergency, obstetric and primary care, and where, over the last six months of the year, they carried out over 10,000 consultations and 900 operations.
In addition, the Emergency Unit undertook six exploratory missions.
| Total interventions | |
|---|---|
| 14 actions: 8 interventions and 6 explorations | |
| Beneficiaries | |
| Over 230,000 people | |
| Financial contribution 2012 | €300,000 |
