Agency in direct communications with NGO partners on the ground in disaster-affected area
SPRING LAKE, Mich., Oct. 9, 2005 - International Aid announced today that it is preparing to mobilize a major relief effort to help victims of this weekend's massive earthquake in Pakistan, which is that country's worst-ever disaster and has left tens of thousands killed, injured and homeless. The unfolding effort marks the agency's third major disaster response in the past ten months.
International Aid has established a communications link with its NGO partners in the earthquake-stricken region and is conducting a rapid needs assessment based on information from these on-the-ground sources. The initial phase of International Aid's response will likely include the shipment of disaster hygiene kits, to be drawn from the agency's stockpile of 20,000 kits, and portable medical clinics that contain all the equipment and medicines to meet the basic health care needs of 10,000 to 20,000 people.
The launch of the Pakistan aid campaign marks an unprecedented, parallel relief effort for International Aid. The agency will simultaneously continue its intensive work in the Banda Aceh and Nias Island areas of Indonesia, which involves providing medical clinics and medical equipment repair to communities devastated by the December 2004 tsunami, and America's Gulf Coast, whose recent hurricane damage has been the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.
International Aid's 20-member hurricane relief team is still fully engaged in the Katrina/Rita effort, and continues to operate from the agency's operations center at Stennis International Airport in Hancock County, Miss. During the past week alone, International Aid shipped food and medicines valued at more than $2 million to the Gulf Coast, and its total relief effort in the region now exceeds $15 million.
International Aid will continue to provide information on its earthquake relief effort - and how companies and individuals can help - as it obtains additional information from the disaster-affected region.
Based in Spring Lake, Michigan, International Aid is a leading health-focused Christian relief and development organization that provides for both the physical and spiritual needs of people worldwide. Over the past decade, International Aid has responded to more than 100 natural and man-made disasters and has delivered relief supplies to 170 countries. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the agency has distributed relief valued at more than $15 million to more than 150 locations across the Gulf Coast region.