WALTHAM, Mass.—The Kidney Community Emergency Response Coalition (KCER) has awarded Babajide Salako, MD, with its Volunteer of the Year Award for his work following Haiti’s devastating earthquake earlier this year.
Salako is the director of Global Pandemic Response Operations at Fresenius Medical Care North America, and he spearheaded efforts to deliver supplies to kidney disease patients in Haiti.
This is the first Volunteer of the Year Award ever given by KCER, and Salako won it by a unanimous vote. The KCER Coalition cited his “valuable leadership, talents and dedicated willingness to serve the renal community in times of crisis.”
In both the H1N1 crisis that emerged last year and the devastating earthquake in Haiti this January, Salako played a vital role in communicating with federal health agencies, physicians, and the U.S. military to ensure KCER received accurate and timely information.
“Dr. Salako understands the importance of careful planning and response in disaster relief efforts, and this award speaks to his reputation at FMCNA and in the renal community as a respected and tireless advocate for kidney patients,” said Bill Numbers, vice president of Operations Support at FMCNA and incident commander for disaster response and planning.
“Fresenius Medical Care has played a key role in all of our major disaster response activities since Hurricane Katrina, and Dr. Salako’s clinical expertise and global perspective proved critical in responding to the threat of H1N1 and to the devastating earthquake in Haiti,” said Kelly Mayo, executive director of KCER.
Salako has been involved in the business of medicine for over a decade, especially in the renal industry, focusing on managing and building dialysis clinics. His international experience includes medical research and practice in Lagos, Nigeria and internal medicine and geriatrics in England. His current work involves developing and implementing a pandemic preparedness plan for Fresenius Medical Care worldwide.
When the earthquake struck Haiti in January, FMCNA pledged close to $200,000 in supplies for Haiti relief efforts, including dialysis machines, dialyzers, needles, bloodlines and heparin. The company shipped four dialysis machines and 10,000 pounds of supplies to a private port in Haiti, and chartered a plane to deliver more supplies to the Dominican Republic within a week after the earthquake. Salako accompanied those supplies, which were then sent to hospitals in Port-au-Prince and to dialysis facilities along the border of Haiti, where evacuees were being brought for treatment.
