The IsraAID humanitarian organization sent a team of seven medical
professionals to Tacloban City in the storm-ravaged Philippines on
Saturday night.
“It’s really hard to get any accurate numbers as
far as [the scale of the] damage is concerned,” IsraAID founding
director Shahar Zahavi said. “Since the area is so hard to reach right
now, there’s a lot of doubt about the actual statistics. It’ll take a
few days, but right now the most I can say is that people are comparing
it to the 2004 [Indian Ocean] tsunami” that killed 230,000 to 280,000 in
14 countries.
“The immediate goal and first priority is to be
aware of the whole injury side of the situation,” Zahavi said. “People
don’t have any more health facilities, so our first goal is health
intervention.”
The Foreign Ministry announced that Israel would
send a search and rescue team with experience in searching damaged
buildings, as well as a medical team.
A six-member advance team –
four people from the IDF Home Front Command and two from the Foreign
Ministry – left on Sunday night to evaluate what is needed on the ground
before Israel sends a larger mission.
Israel has frequently
offered aid in the wake of disasters overseas, such as the earthquake in
Haiti in January 2010 and an earthquake in Turkey in 2011.
In
the coming days, after the situation is better assessed, IsraAID will
deploy trauma professionals and child protection specialists.
“We’ll wait to get a better understanding of the situation to decide just how many people to add,” Zahavi said.
“But trauma and child protection are usually some of the most sensitive issues in...situations like this.”
Zahavi
said that he thinks there will be five to six members in each team,
though that number is subject to change as they receive more
information.
“After the immediate medical issues are addressed,
the next concerns are issues like the influx of people who have become
homeless,” Zahavi said. “And in the days after, people start getting
sick, and then there’s not enough food to go around. So the needs change
as the process unfolds.”
As far as a long-term timetable is
concerned, Zahavi emphasized that IsraAID still maintains teams in Haiti
and in Japan to aid in the recovery process following the earthquakes
in 2010 and 2011, respectively.
“Our goal is not to do this in a
hit-and-run type of fashion,” he said. “Our ability to maintain a
presence there will depend on a lot of things like available resources
and funding, but we want to provide a more holistic approach that
focuses on long-term aid rather than just immediate relief.”
The Jewish Federations of North America have also mobilized a communal response to Typhoon Haiyan.
In
conjunction with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, they
opened a mailbox yesterday for Federation relief efforts.
“Our
thoughts and prayers go out to the Filipino people suffering from this
terrible storm’s unimaginable destruction,” Cheryl Fishbein, chairwoman
of JFNA’s Emergency Committee, said.
Information on how to donate to the aid groups can be found at http://jfeds.org/haiyanrelief and http://israaid.co.il/donate.
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