Give the gift of health to vulnerable families

By Haimo Duan

Expired

Donate to Reach to support the UAE’s mission to end neglected tropical diseases. Together we can help give more families a chance at a healthy future.

Health and Nutrition

AED 50,000.00

0.1% Funded AED 50.00 / 50,000. 00

About the Cause

Poor health and nutrition negatively affect children’s school attendance and ability to learn. We implement school feeding programs that look for alternative ways to ensure sustainable supply of nutritious foods to school children and young people in urban and marginalized areas.

In addition, contaminated water and poor sanitation are big factors that result in the death of children worldwide. In our programs, we always include what is called WASH which means Water, Sanitation & Hygiene. This is done through the design and construction of child-friendly and gender sensitive facilities for sanitation, such as latrines and hand-washing stations. We also provide clean water supply by building water wells and raise awareness about the importance of sanitation and hygiene.

My Story

The Reach campaign raises funds and awareness to help combat two neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) - river blindness and lymphatic filariasis. NTDs are a group of diseases that are preventable and treatable, yet continue to affect more than 1.7 billion people worldwide, including 1 billion children. These diseases slowly blind, debilitate and disfigure their victims, and can be fatal. By most commonly affecting the poorest communities, NTDs create cycles of stigma and poverty, keeping adults out of work, children out of school, and costing developing nations billions of dollars each year. Just AED5 can provide the medicine and treatment needed to protect one person from both diseases for a year. Donate today and help support the fight to end NTDs for good.

For more than 30 years, the UAE has been committed to the fight to eliminate neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). This legacy began with a personal donation made in 1990 by the country’s founding father, His Highness Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, in support of the global campaign to eradicate the NTD Guinea worm.

This donation gave rise to a decades-long commitment by Abu Dhabi’s ruling family to disease eradication, which continues today through the philanthropic commitments of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE.

Inspired by his philanthropy, the Reach campaign helps to raise funds and awareness in support of efforts to wipe out river blindness and lymphatic filariasis.

River blindness is an infection spread by flies that causes severe skin irritation and, eventually, irreversible blindness. Lymphatic filariasis, meanwhile, is a mosquito-borne disease that causes extreme swelling of parts of the body, leading to permanent disability and disfigurement.

Over 200 million people worldwide require treatment for river blindness, while 850 million people are at risk of lymphatic filariasis.

All proceeds raised by Reach go to benefit the Reaching the Last Mile Fund, an initiative working to eliminate these two NTDs across seven countries, through the provision of preventative drugs and treatment. To date, RLMF has funded treatment for 118 million people and trained more than 700,000 health workers.