Since 28 September 2006, North Star Alliance has been committed to bringing high quality health services to mobile populations, through building a network of public-private partnerships, and investing in sustainable practices.
Our conception, itself, was through the ground-breaking public-private partnership of the World Food Programme and TNT, and came about when they found that they were losing so many truck drivers to AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa that they were struggling to deliver food to hungry people.
While TNT had committed to responsibly address the negative impact of AIDS-related diseases within the transport sector, research by WFP indicated that some transport companies had lost more than 50% of their drivers, and that an entire generation of truck drivers was at risk.
The experience not only highlighted the vulnerability of truck drivers and other people on the move to HIV and other diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, and as we’ve seen most recently, Ebola, but also the critical role they play in spreading the diseases as they move between cities and countries.
With their need for health services compounded by their access restricted by their own mobility, we thought: if they can’t get to health care, then health care needs to get to them.
Over the past ten years, we have done just that. And we’ve done it as a team, and as an alliance of like-minded partners who see the acute need for a targeted service like ours in mobile workers and the communities they interact with.
North Star Alliance is ”a remarkable social enterprise that is creating wide-scale social change through its network of Blue Box Roadside Wellness Centres.” David Aikman
According to David Aikman, Head of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, North Star Alliance is ”a remarkable social enterprise that is creating wide-scale social change through its network of Blue Box Roadside Wellness Centres. North Star has achieved success through cross sector collaboration, working with regional governing bodies to influence health policy, building corporate partnerships to scale the clinics, and interacting with hospitals to ensure consistent health care.”
As we continue to expand our activities across Africa and around the world, we invite you to follow our story and join us in thinking outside the box, and inside a blue one.
