Friday, July 29, 2011
Toronto-based Global Medic is set to ship waterpurification supplies to Somalia and Kenya, with an initial emergency team expected to travel to the region to help local officials distribute and use the materials.
Matt Capobianco, GlobalMedic's manager of emergency programs, said the organization is sending 1.5 million water purification tablets and sachets, which will help to combat the famine that has affected 12 million people in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti. Some agencies claim it is the worst drought in 60 years.
"It would be a two-to fourperson team and essentially what we do in any disaster situation is we ... train local partners on how to (use) our technical equipment," Capobianco said Thursday.
"We work side by side with them and then we let them take over the operation from there to empower local communities."
Similar missions have lasted between one and three months, Capobianco said.
Once the team is on the ground and able to assess specific needs, more resources may be brought in, he said.
"Depending on how our mission progresses, as we ramp up, we'll bring in additional team members - whether it be medics and nurses going in to help with feeding centres - and the deployment will mobilize from there," he said. "We want to bring in that knowledge from the 50-plus missions we've done over the past five years and help the local communities we're working with."
GlobalMedic's efforts are in addition to widespread humanitarian efforts from other organizations in Canada.
Donation campaigns are underway by the Canadian Red Cross, Care Canada and other groups. The federal government has also established a donation-matching program, in which individual donations to the crisis in East Africa will be matched by the government between July 6 and Sept. 16.
To date, the federal government has pledged $72 million for humanitarian relief.
Somalia is the Horn of Africa country worst affected by a prolonged drought, that has put some 12 million people in danger of starvation and spurred a global fundraising campaign.
Thousands of Somalis continue to stream into neighbouring Ethiopia and Kenya seeking food and water.
Source: AFP