In a world beset by armed conflict and in which natural disasters alone affect 250 million people each year, rapid deployment of Emergency Response Teams to help those in distress is a fundamental part of International Medical Corps’ mission. Using existing close ties at the local level, International Medical Corps can get aid and health care quickly where it is needed most. By building relationships at the local, national, and international level, International Medical Corps helps local communities reduce risk, as well as prepare for and respond to crises.
International Medical Corps’ flexibility, experience, and access to a network of local professionals and humanitarian workers globally have made it one of the world’s most effective rapid response agencies, saving lives by providing basic services: health care, clean water, food and shelter.
As a member of the UK Department for International Development’s (DFID) Rapid Response Network, International Medical Corps is prepared to respond fast and effectively to humanitarian emergencies anywhere in the world. This streamlined funding will remove the paperwork that can delay the arrival of life saving supplies, experts and equipment in the crucial hours following earthquakes, floods, famines and other humanitarian emergencies.
International Medical Corps was among the first organisations to enter Libya once the conflict began in February 2011, providing emergency medical care to casualties from the fighting and support to hospitals with medical staff and supplies. Among the first challenges our Emergency Response Teams encountered was a chronic shortage of nurses, as thousands of foreign nurses had fled the country. In partnership with the Jordan Health Aid Society, International Medical Corps immediately deployed volunteer nurses to health centres across eastern Libya and rapidly mobilised them to major population centres throughout the country as access permitted. Volunteer nurses trained the local counterparts while working alongside them; a key programme activity that continues today.
At the country’s borders and within Libya, we supplied those displaced by the fighting with essential relief items, including blankets, bottled water and food. Recognising the danger posed by communicable diseases, our sanitation and hygiene specialists constructed latrines and washing stations in transit camps along the Tunisia borders.
As the fighting went on International Medical Corps worked as close to the front line as possible, providing emergency treatment to those injured in the conflict, and medicines and supplies to besieged towns and cities. In Misurata, inaccessible by road, we evacuated nearly 500 injured civilians by boat. International Medical Corps’ mobile field hospitals treated the wounded from battles in Tripoli, the Western Mountains, Bani Walid, Sabha, Jufrah and Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte.
Since the death of Qaddafi in October 2011 and the end of widespread fighting, International Medical Corps has remained in Libya. Our teams of health specialists are supporting primary health care through 15 clinics across Libya, training a range of health professionals and strengthening the capacity of the Libyan health sector to tackle the health, mental health and rehabilitation needs of a country emerging from war.
Just 22 hours after the devastating 7.0-earthquake hit in January 2010, International Medical Corps’ Emergency Response Team was on the ground in Haiti providing medical care to survivors. Our doctors and nurses were able to mobilise on an unparalleled scale to provide 24-hour emergency care to the acutely injured at the Hôpital de l’Université d’État d’Haiti (HUEH), a 700-bed hospital in Port-au-Prince. HUEH was badly damaged in the earthquake and many local health care professionals were missing. We were able to save thousands of lives through emergency and trauma care in the critical days following the earthquake.
International Medical Corps also coordinated from the outset with other NGOs and hospital administration to fill critical gaps. At the height of emergency operations at the hospital, International Medical Corps treated approximately 1,000 patients per day. Our early entry also gave us the foundation to rapidly expand our operations to 15 mobile clinics throughout Haiti to provide critical services. Through the hospital and mobile and fixed clinics, International Medical Corps teams provided more than 110,000 patient consultations during the first year following the emergency.
When reports of acute diarrhoea emerged from the north of Haiti in October 2010, International Medical Corps doctors and nurses immediately deployed to the region providing emergency relief for the growing cholera crisis. Our network of rapidly constructed cholera treatment centres, supported by 820 community health volunteers to educate communities on how to prevent and identify cholera, meant that more than 30,000 cholera patients received life-saving treatment within the first year following the outbreak.
Immediately following the devastating 2010 floods in Pakistan, International Medical Corps mobilised local teams to begin providing comprehensive primary healthcare, water, sanitation, hygiene and mental health services to the flood affected population. We are currently operating 114 medical units serving Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), Punjab and Sindh provinces where in many cases our teams are the only source of health care services for the local population. One of the first NGOs to provide emergency response after the floods, International Medical Corps mobilised medical teams in Pakistan with support from the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA).
Due to stagnant floodwaters, poor sanitation conditions and contaminated drinking water, our doctors were regularly treating acute respiratory infections, skin infections and diarrheal diseases which if left untreated can prove fatal.
When floods returned in 2011, International Medical Corps was once again able to deploy life saving medical teams. Our staff, already working in government health facilities in Sindh province immediately began providing medical services to the affected population. International Medical Corps also deployed 20 additional rapid response medical teams to the worst-affected districts. At the height of our response, International Medical Corps was treating more than 40,000 patients in Sindh province alone.