Promoting Environmental Health Interventions: International Medical Corps and Earth Council Geneva Launch Strategic Partnership

“We are pleased to join forces with Earth Council Geneva. Their trust and support will enable us to build upon our 25 years of delivering life-saving health interventions, specifically providing clean water and hygiene education to the world’s most vulnerable populations,” says Rabih Torbay, Vice President of International Operations of International Medical Corps.

“I greatly admire the accomplishments of International Medical Corps,” said Reto Braun, Chairman of the Earth Council Geneva. “This partnership is precisely in line with our aim to support specific projects worldwide, possibly with the ECG expertise of e-learning programs, particularly in the area of water, sanitation and other related services.”

Consistent with its mission of building capacity and transferring skills to local populations, International Medical Corps will ensure its efforts are sustainable by mobilizing and training community members.

The partnership’s priorities will include:

• Providing access to clean water through the rehabilitation and/or construction of new, locally sustainable facilities
• Delivering hygiene promotion, water and sanitation education, and behavioral change-oriented messages
• Increasing access to locally sustainable sanitation facilities through construction or rehabilitation, as well as providing hygiene products
• Providing education on the importance of proper hygiene and its relation to improving health and well-being
• Promoting education and understanding of one’s role in positively impacting and protecting the environment as it relates to climate change

According to the World Health Organization, climate change is a significant and emerging threat to public health, and changes the way we must look at protecting vulnerable populations. Climate variability and change cause death and disease through natural disasters such as heat waves, floods and drought.

EARTH COUNCIL GENEVA was founded as a non political NGO in 2002 with the mission to raise the awareness to the threatened world environment via the innovation of the internet. ECG offers interactive, blended e- learning courses on the topics of Climate Change, Global Trade, Sustainability, Biodiversity and Desertification. Some 8,000 students in 83 countries have participated over the past years. The focus of ECG has now evolved to support specific projects in these areas by building on its strength and its knowledge base.