Corporate social responsibility

We have long been supporting Doctors with Africa CUAMM, the largest Italian NGO for the promotion and protection of health in Africa. In 2017, together with the Italian NPO Uno per Cento, we contributed to the construction of a “Mother Waiting House” in the Ethiopian Wolisso Urban district, near the health centre of Obi. Built to assist future mothers during childbirth, the facility employs qualified personnel, also trained to cope with obstetric complications. This location was chosen since in 2016 the health centre, with a catchment area of 22,000 people, could only attend 184 childbirths out of the 800 expected ones, 122 of which were extremely difficult. Due to the long distances to cover, often on foot or using improvised means of transport, and the lack of facilities offering assistance before labour, women used to give birth at home, with all the risks involved. But with the Mother Waiting House, Doctors with Africa CUAMM plans to attract many more future mothers to the facility, thus attending and handling 100 out of the 122 complicated childbirths expected in a year, besides the ones without difficulties. The construction of this complex is part of a larger program of Doctors with Africa CUAMM, called “Mothers and Children, First 1,000 Days”, which aims at ensuring assisted childbirth together with medical and nutritional care for future mothers and their babies from the beginning of pregnancy and for the first two years of the child’s life, in Ethiopia and in the other six countries in which the association operates.