Walgreens helps Vitamin Angels reach over 200 million women and children

11-Sep-2019 - Last updated on 11-Sep-2019 at 23:59 GMT

Image courtesy of Vitamin Angels

Vitamin Angels and Walgreens have announced they have reached a new milestone in their partnership to improve child and maternal health.

The charity and pharmacy store chain recently announced that they have supplied over 200 million children and mothers with essential vitamins and supplements around the world. The life-changing vitamins help prevent blindness and other serious conditions in undernourished children in the US and across the globe.

“The strength of this partnership is our shared commitment to accessible, affordable health care, and Walgreens ability to bring this program to our customers in nearly every community nationwide,” said Alex Gourlay, president of Walgreens and Co-Chief Operating Officer of WBA. “Every child deserves a healthy future.”About one-third of pregnant women in the US experience iron deficiency, while nearly one-third of women residing in low and middle-income countries around the world do not have access to basic health services. This puts these women at an increased risk for poor nutrition, including vitamin A deficiency and anemia.

Walgreens and Vitamin Angels have been teaming up for the last six years to raise money to address these healthcare disparities:

One percent of sales of participating vitamin products at Walgreens support Vitamin Angels’ outreach efforts to communities in need across the US and globally.
In January 2019, Walgreens held a ‘Quarter Drive’ customer donation program, which resulted in an additional $1.5 million raised to support Vitamin Angels work.

Vitamin Angels operates in 74 countries through a network of over 1,600 field partners who provide health services and nutritional support across the critical window of a child’s development. These services include distributing prenatal multivitamins and Vitamin A, promotion of breast-feeding practices and deworming. Domestically, the organization works across every state in the US to support pregnant women’s health with prenatal multivitamins and nutrition education.

“With the support of Walgreens, Vitamin Angels has been able to reach millions of mothers and children under five at risk of malnutrition with life-saving nutrients,” said Howard Schiffer, founder and president of Vitamin Angels. “We are honored to be partnering with an organization that cares so much about children and moms in the US and around the world.”