Apollo Tyres and Ambuja Cements have jointly set up a Health Care Centre in Dhulagarh, Howrah District, 20 kms from the heart of Kolkata city.
Apollo Tyres and Ambuja Cements signed a Memorandum of Understanding to utilise resources and best practices while furthering the shared objective of creating value for stakeholders.
The two Corporates were drawn to each other because of their shared vision of bettering public health. It was felt that by coming together, both Apollo Tyres and Ambuja Cements would be able to reach out to a lot more people.
The Health Care Centre is a large transshipment hub outside the city for all traffic between the two commercial cities of Kolkata and Mumbai. The primary aim of the Dhulagarh Health Centre will be awareness generation on, and prevention of, HIV-AIDS among truckers and the local community, which services the trucking population.
This is possibly the first targeted HIV-AIDS intervention for the trucking community through a Private-Private Partnership. Apollo Tyres also executed the first ever Public-Private Partnership in HIV awareness, when it opened a similar Health Care Centre in Jaipur in 2007, in partnership with the Rajasthan State AIDS Control Society.
Harshita Pande, Head, Corporate Social Responsibility, Apollo Tyres Ltd, commented, "The Health Centre at Dhulagarh, targeting the sexual health of the trucking and local communities, is an important step for us. It is our first CSR footprint in the eastern region of the country. Over the next few months we are also looking at dovetailing a much-needed Tuberculosis Programme into this Centre. This is a fabulous beginning to our partnership with Ambuja Cements. I feel more such partnerships could make our individual efforts in public health even stronger."
The Health Centre, which is located in the Dhulagarh parking lot on National Highway 6 is staffed by a permanent doctor and counsellor, who are trained in diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections.
Addressing on the occasion, Ms Pearl Tiwari, Head, Corporate Social Responsibility, Ambuja Cements Limited, said, "For Ambuja Cement, the truckers community is of special interest as it forms an important part of our supply chain. Taking into consideration the total number of trips made by our trucks per month, we have a captive audience of about 20,000 truckers and cleaners"
At the Dhulagarh Health Care Centre, while Ambuja Cements is acting as the on-ground implementation partner, Apollo Tyres is taking care of training and capacity building issues. Costs are being shared by the partners equally. Going forward, Apollo and Ambuja plan to scale-up the scope of their association to other Heath Care Centres across the country.
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