Amsterdam, 23 November 2022 – Today we would like to give some attention to our customer International Medical Corps (IMC) by discussing a recent shipment to Afghanistan packed with IDA emergency health products.

IDA Foundation delivers life-saving health goods to customers in over 130 countries around the world. The majority of our deliveries are forecasted and planned by sea shipment, or in emergency situations, also by air shipments. Due to the location of our destination, road shipments are not as frequent. However,  in this case, we followed one of our road shipments making its way all the way from our warehouse in the Netherlands, to Afghanistan, where it will reach patients in need of essential medicines and supplies. 

Case study: Afghanistan

The dire humanitarian situation in Afghanistan continues after years of conflict and a lack of health infrastructure. Aside from the political unrest, natural disasters such as flooding and earthquakes, have worsened the situation. In the country, an estimated 18 million people— roughly half the Afghan population and including about 10 million children—rely on humanitarian assistance for their survival. Our customer IMC has been in Afghanistan since 1984 (when IMC was founded) to address the critical need for medical care in this war-torn country.

As one of International Medical Corpes’ key suppliers, IDA Foundation supplies emergency health goods to the area. Recently we managed to ship four trucks loaded with IDA emergency health products to Kabul from our warehouse in Tilburg. This overland – partial sea shipment took around 30 days and as the trucks had different routes, they went through thirteen different European and Western Asian countries.

IDA’s team follows all shipments closely, through daily contact with our customers and freight forwarders, to track the location of the goods.

An overland shipment that crosses this many country- and natural borders poses many challenges of which the weather was an important determining factor. For example, when the shipment crossed the Caspian Sea the weather conditions were stormy, which led to us holding the shipment’s departure as it was too dangerous to cross the sea at that point. Despite this, the shipment reached Kabul, ready to be distributed further to other locations in Afghanistan where IMC can support patients in need with these important emergency health products.

50 Years IDA: Building Healthy Futures

As part of IDA’s 50^th anniversary Stories campaign, we spoke to various partners to share their reflections on our partnerships and their outlook on the future, as part of our theme ‘Building healthy futures’. This theme brings together our mission of ‘bridging the gap in access to medicines’ and our long-term goals Universal health coverage, Strengthened local capacity, and Sustainable value chains. Aside from our Stories campaign, we celebrated with partners and employees of IDA Foundation on September 8, 2022. At this event, we were honored to welcome Nikola Usenovic of IMC, who spoke about the organisation’s mission, experiences and the transience of partnerships in humanitarian emergencies. Read a summary of our 50^th anniversary event here, or visit our LinkedIn page to see some snapshots! For more information about IMC visit their website.