The DNB banka has concluded a partnership agreement with the local branch of the Ronald McDonald House Charities programme, which provides free health care to children all over Latvia.
DNB will provide the organisation with a new car for a three-year period, covering all service costs at a level of more than LVL 19,000. The new car will allow the charity to save around LVL 3,000 in automobile rental costs each year, and that means that it will be able to provide free medical consultations to another 400 and more children in Latvia.
DNB banka president Åsmund Skår transferred the title to the new Ford S-Max vehicle to Ronald McDonald House Charities Latvia director Vija Tirzmale on March 18, and the organisation took the first trip in the car on March 20, with doctors visiting children in the town of Baldone.
The car which DNB is providing will be used for the charitable organisation’s mobile health care centre, which sends doctors from the Paediatric Clinical University Hospital to areas in Latvia where specialised paediatric services are in short supply, offering free consultations and examinations to local children. The mobile centre has a 12-metre modern transport vehicle for the provision of diagnostic and preventive medical services. Until the new car was made available, the doctors who accompanied the medical vehicle had to rent cars.
“Ronald McDonald House Charities Latvia rented cars for the purposes of the mobile health care centre, and that was an unnecessary spending of finances,” says Skår. “For that reason, the organisation decided to buy its own car, and because DNB is concerned about social responsibility, we are delighted that we could help the Ronald McDonald House Charities Latvia organisation to pursue its goals in Latvia. Doctors who visit children all over Latvia will now be able to travel in a new and safe vehicle. The money that will be saved because it is no longer necessary to rent cars means that doctors will be able to provide free medical consultations to several dozen more children in Latvia each month.”
Various types of doctors work at the mobile health care centre – ophthalmologists, paediatricians, pulmonologists and allergy specialists, neurologists, paediatric endocrinologists, gastroenterologists, dermatologists and ear, nose and throat doctors. Last year the centre visited more than 70 towns in Latvia.
“The aim of Ronald McDonald House Charities Latvia is to make medical services more easily available to families with children in Latvia’s various regions,” says Tirzmale. “The mobile health care centre allowed us to provide free health care to 4,237 children last year, and since 2011, when we launched operations, we have provided such care more than 6,000 times. I am truly delighted at what we have achieved, because our goal is to facilitate health care for children. All of our achievements are based on funding from donors, and that is the only way in which we raise money. We can do more work thanks to our supporters and I want to thank each and every one of them.”
