Sahel, West Africa Food Crisis Emergency

We’re set up and delivering health care

 Merlin has been working in Chad for nearly three months now. Why did we send out an Emergency Response Team in the first place?  The facts speak for themselves:

• 3.6 million have no food security, i.e. parents can not be sure that they have enough food to feed their family.
• 1.5 million of those people have severe food insecurity, there is a wholly inadequate, availability of food i.e. families do not know if they have food for each day or week.
• 127,000 children are severely malnourished i.e. very near to death.

Merlin's Emergency Response Team

Our emergency response was led by Lea Gilbert (see photos below).  Once on the ground, Lea and the initial team began the set up process.   Merlin’s logistician Justin Bangue searched out an appropriate base, to be used as an office and place to sleep, eat and have a little down time.  He and Lea were also in charge of liaising with country representatives of government donors about ongoing funding and talking to various Chad government departments to make sure all the paper work was in order, including recruitment procedures and non-profit certifications.

Justin also coordinated the delivery of procured supplies and medicines, to make sure everything was in place for our health and mobile teams, to make sure they could start offering services as soon as possible.

The health & nutrition teams come under the supervision of Angela Muruiki, Merlin’s Health Manager in Chad.  She has been leading training sessions with local health staff and outreach teams in basic health and nutrition care.  Angela ensures that every health worker has the required skills to offer quality health care to everyone that needs it, including those living in more rural and remote communities.   Since the outreach services were available, and now word has spread, the number of families visiting the outreach clinics has risen each week, from double to triple figures.

Angela’s team has also set up a therapeutic Feeding Center in Massaguet Hospital, one of only 3 hospitals in Hadjer Lamis province, in the central, west of Chad. On June 13^th alone, the Feeding Center received more than 30 new, severely malnourished children into the feeding program, and a neighboring health clinic registered 50 more. 

Our teams will be there to help 100’s, maybe 1000’s more children, mothers, the elderly, in fact anyone that needs our care, over the coming months. 

Also...Do you think Merlin is doing a good job?

If you love our work, then tell the world! You have an exciting opportunity to help Merlin (Medical Emergency Relief International) make even more of a difference. GreatNonprofits - a site like Amazon Book Reviews or TripAdvisor - is a website where people can share their stories about nonprofits that they really believe in.

Will you help us raise awareness and support for our life saving work, by posting a review of about Merlin?All reviews will be visible to potential donors. It's easy and only takes a few minutes. Please go to:http://greatnonprofits.org/organizations/reviews/medical-emergency-relief-international-usa-inc and log your comment.

With your help, we can gain visibility and ultimately funds for our health care work around the world.

Merlin can respond to situations such as the food crisis in Sahel, because of you.  Thank you.

Links:

• From our website - background to the crisis
• More on our Merlin UK website
• A view from Think Africa Press 'The Perfect Food Storm'

Thank you for offering your support to our work in Chad.  If you are thinking of supporting again, tomorrow (June 13th) would be a great day to do it.  Those lovely people at Global Giving will give an additional 40% on donations.  So a $20 donation from you, is actually a $28 gift to Merlin.

PS.  Please try and get that gift in early, they only have $75,000 to give away.

Nigel Young, Merlin's Head of the Emergency Response Team took a trip to Chad to meet with the emergency response team who have been setting up primary health care and nutrition services.

Read about his week (as told to Third Sector Magazine)

Monday: It's a big week for Merlin's response team. After three months of leg-work in London and Chad, we are about to hand over to the regional management team there. I am flying from Heathrow to N'Djamena, the capital city of Chad, to check all is well before the handover. To make the most of my trip, I am traveling via Amman and Addis Ababa, so I can catch up with the team in Ethiopia.

Tuesday: I fly from Addis Ababa to N'Djamena, where I am pleasantly surprised to find the visa arrangements go like clockwork. I travel to the office to say hello to the team, who have been working in the punishing 40C heat without any air conditioning. Then it is off to a UN meeting on the Consolidated Appeals Process, used by aid organizations to plan and implement their activities. This is all conducted in French, but I pick up roughly half of what is said.

Wednesday: My first day in the field is a visit to Massakory, a three-hour drive from N'Djamena, where I meet the governor of the province. I look over a couple of clinics and the field hospital, where Merlin is setting up a stabilisation centre to treat malnourished children in cooperation with the Ministry of Health. Everything is pretty much on track after the painfully slow process of getting donors' contracts signed.

Thursday: I visit the great and good in N'Djamena to gain an understanding of their concerns and, I hope, to allay a few of them. One difficulty with finding funding for Chad is that the food crisis is a slow burner. There is no one trigger event, so it is hard to get media attention that is unrelated to the jubilee, Euro 2012 or the Olympics.

Friday: The idea is to be on the plane for the 18-hour flight home, but there is a dust storm at the airport and the flight is delayed. Chad is different from many of the countries I have visited. On the surface there is visible wealth, but underneath that gloss the poverty is severe. We have been a bit slower than we would have liked and have lost two or three weeks navigating the bureaucracy, but considering this is our first time here we have done well.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us.

Links:

• The article as featured in Third Sector