GERMANY-BASED logistics services provider Logwin has transported 10 tonnes of urgent medical supplies from Amsterdam to Bangui, the capital of war-torn Central African Republic.
The African nation has been in a state of civil war for almost 18 months and hundreds of thousands of people, many of them children, have fled their homes.
The Save the Children charity has been collecting donations to provide emergency humanitarian aid on the ground.
Teams in Bangui, Kemo, Nana-Gribizi and Ouaka have been distributing medicine and medical equipment to health centres, while mobile hospitals have visited towns and villages with inadequate health infrastructure.
"Medical provision in the Central African Republic is very poor and there is a significant risk that life-threatening diseases will spread," explains Kathrin Wieland, chief executive of Save the Children, Germany.
"That's why we are very grateful to our partner Logwin for transporting essential medicine and medical equipment to the region."
Logwin collected the goods, packed on pallets, from suppliers in Amsterdam and nearby Lelystad and transported tablets, syringes, infusion bags, examination gloves and doctors’ clothing to Amsterdam Airport, with some of the sensitive supplies having to be moved under temperature-controlled conditions.
Organising air transport from Amsterdam proved to be a particular challenge since only a few airlines serve Bangui Airport and the only direct connection from Europe was booked out for two weeks.
Kevin Körner, airfreight export manager at Logwin, pulled out all the stops to get the aid supplies to their destination as quickly as possible and came across an alternative connection.
"We remained in close contact with the suppliers in the Netherlands the whole time in order to be able to collect at short notice," he explains.
“Thanks to the great commitment of everybody involved, the aid shipment reached the Central African Republic at the beginning of July.”
Logwin has contributed to a number of Save the Children projects in the past.
Last year, the company transported football boots and balls to Za'atari Camp in Jordan, where tens of thousands of Syrian refugees live; and in 2011 it supported a fund-raising campaign for flood victims in Thailand.
For the latest project, Logwin performed not just the entire organisation but also covered most of the costs of transport.
