In good health

The HANA initiative in Egypt is helping improve health literacy among farmworkers and their communities.

At the Martin Bauer Group, we have a comprehensive understanding of quality. It isn’t just about having high expectations of our raw materials, it includes the fair treatment of our supply partners and a decent standard of living in the places where we source our ingredients.

The Assiut region of Egypt, around 400 kilometers south of Cairo, is an important growing area for Martin Bauer. Here, we obtain mabagrown-quality peppermint, chamomile, fennel, marigolds, lemongrass and more. These raw materials are grown on a farm that is expertly managed by our supply partner Ottoman in the area between the fertile Nile Valley and the vast Arabian Desert.

Poverty and unemployment are rife in rural regions

Rural areas of Egypt are beset with a host of problems including poverty, high unemployment, and inadequate healthcare. Jobs at the Fairtrade-certified farm in Assiut are therefore very desirable. Farm workers here earn enough to support their families, and these jobs do not pose the health risks of some other jobs in, for example, the cement factory or conventional agriculture.

Farm workers are vaccinated and regularly examined, and when they or their family members require medical treatment they receive medicines free of charge.

We are therefore confident that the workers in our supply chains are relatively well served when it comes to occupational health and safety. However, our supply partners and farmworkers have reported widespread health problems in their community – and we aimed to remedy those.

Focusing on nutrition and health

We worked with our customer Traditional Medicinals to develop the HANA (Health and Nutrition Awareness) initiative. Our intention is for the initiative to successfully target 1,000 people by summer 2020.

HANA pools means and measures to achieve two primary goals: making medical services more accessible in the remote community, and imparting practical knowledge about health and nutrition to farmworkers and their families.

In this way we will bolster health literacy in the community and help people take an informed and self-determined approach to leading a healthier life.

Clinic on wheels gets a great response

In an initial step, we worked with our partner NGO Assiut Childhood Development Association  to organize a traveling clinic. This February, the bus drove to the community of Arab El Kelabat with four experienced physicians on board. They were barely able to keep up with the rush of patients: 524 adults and children came to the mobile unit for a free checkup.

The doctors carried out several hundred gastroenterological, urological and pediatric exams. They treated acute cases and referred seriously ill patients for further medical attention. Since the traveling clinic was so well received, we plan to send it out again. Next time, we hope that an ophthalmologist, a gynecologist, a neurologist and an orthopedist will also be on board.

Health literacy as a decisive factor

A four-week training program in March equipped people in the community to take active steps towards improving their own health. The course covered topics relevant to participants’ daily lives such as preventative healthcare, contraception, and how to eat a balanced diet. Ensuring that women have a high degree of health literacy generally has a positive impact on entire families, so the training program focused particularly on women. But there were also tailored training measures targeting men, parents and schoolchildren. Thankfully, we were able to complete the training program before measures to prevent the spread of the corona virus stopped people from being able to meet.

Corona in Egypt

In early February the first case of corona virus was confirmed in Egypt, which is the most populous country in North Africa. Although the figures are still far behind those of Europe and China, recently the number of confirmed cases has risen rapidly. As of April 5, 2020 the official statistics record 1,173 active cases and 78 deaths. Schools and universities have been closed since mid-March, as have archaeological sites, museums, airports and hotels since the end of the month. The Egyptian government has imposed a partial lockdown.

We will be continuing our work in the community as soon as we can.