Kempinski Subsidiary BE Health Receives Legacy Award for Tuberculosis Prevention

Ending Workplace Tuberculosis campaign recognises BE Health for tuberculosis prevention initiatives in Bangkok and Djibouti in the past years

Kempinski Hotels has been recognised by the Ending Workplace Tuberculosis (EWTB) campaign with a 2023 Legacy Exemplar Award for its efforts to reduce the spread of workplace TB. Founded by a collection of global healthcare organisations at Davos 2020, EWTB provides best practice tools enabling businesses and workplace communities around the world to take collective action in reducing the spread of tuberculosis.

As part of its efforts, the EWTB Exemplar Awards recognises companies that have set a leading example with actions and initiatives that help combat the spread of the disease. Kempinski corporate social responsibility programme BE Health was given the award for its long-standing efforts to reduce the spread of TB in and around its hotels in Bangkok and Djibouti.

“Receiving the 2023 Legacy Exemplar Award from Ending Workplace TB is a great tribute to the outstanding work carried out by our colleagues in Bangkok and Djibouti,” says Anne Marie Bettex-Baars, Managing Director, BE Health. “From BE Health’s incorporation in 2013 to its restructuring in recent times, our hotel teams were involved in hundreds of workplace activities, health screenings and community prevention activities, as well as fundraising and awareness campaigns.”

As well as disease prevention activities among the workforce, employees at Siam Kempinski Hotel Bangkok and Djibouti Palace Kempinski worked with local healthcare providers in local communities to support initiatives aimed at the prevention of tuberculosis and other communicable diseases like HIV and malaria. Specially trained ‘peer health educators’ from both hotels organised awareness and fundraising campaigns to provide financial support for tuberculosis patients in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The initiatives supported vulnerable patients with food and housing, as well as transportation to healthcare centres.

In recent times, Kempinski relaunched BE Health and introduced the programme across its global portfolio, unifying all Kempinski hotels under one corporate social responsibility vision: a world where health is contagious. With a broader scope that now includes both communicable and non-communicable diseases, BE Health empowers teams at each Kempinski hotel around the world to identify projects in local communities and develop programmes to support healthcare needs.

“Giving each hotel the freedom to choose which local healthcare projects it supports acknowledges the fact that Kempinski teams know their communities and local needs much better than we can hope to do at a corporate level,” says Bettex-Baars. “By taking this approach, we have designed a CSR programme that’s global in vision and local in implementation, creating a worldwide chain of healthcare initiatives that are conceived and developed from the ground up in each Kempinski destination.” 

TB is the world’s most lethal infectious disease and it is found in nearly every country on the planet. More than 10.5 million people are infected with the disease each year resulting in more than 1.5 million deaths, and it is becoming increasingly hard to treat with drugs. But easy-to-implement interventions including better hygiene habits are found to significantly reduce the risk of contracting the disease. Spreading awareness of these interventions by training community leaders and peer educators in best practices is one of the key goals of EWTB.

EWTB was founded by a collection of global healthcare organisations including Johnson & Johnson, Fullerton Health, The Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria, the Stop TB Partnership, USAID India and the Confederation of Indian Industries. The campaign is supported by 50 of the largest companies in the world, reaching six million employees directly and hundreds of millions through workplace communities.

BE Health is a critical pillar in the Kempinski Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) Strategy. The latest BE Health achievements will be detailed in the Kempinski ESG Report 2022-23 as part of the company’s ESG reporting requirements.