Responding to Hurricane Dorian with life-saving treatments
Pre-positioning essential medicines helps save lives in the Bahamas
Hurricane Dorian made landfall in the Bahamas on September 1, affecting the lives of tens of thousands of people. Health clinics have been completely destroyed, leaving many with no access to healthcare.
Urgent needs include continuity in medication for chronic conditions, screening for infectious diseases, tetanus vaccines for puncture wounds and emergency medical care. With widespread distress and trauma, some communities are also seeing acute mental health problems.
Twelve Essential Health Packs arrived in the Bahamas on 13th September. They were gratefully received by our partner International Medical Corps.
The need for emergency medicines is critical.
Thanks to the generosity of our supporters and healthcare partners, we’ve been able to pre-position and send out a number of Essential Health Packs. These are already saving lives in the Bahamas.
As news of the storm broke, we shipped a dozen Essential Health Packs, which arrived in the Bahamas on 13th September. The generosity of our donors meant we could pre-position these packs for disaster situations, and ship them out to our in-country partner at a moment’s notice.
Since then, we have sent six more packs. Each contains a wide range of treatments including antibiotics, painkillers, antifungals and medicines for chronic conditions.
We are working closely with our longstanding partner International Medical Corps, which is assisting the government on Grand Bahama island.
“This shipment was desperately needed [and] arrived just in time,” Marcia Roeder, of International Medical Corps, told us. “Our field teams just ran out of the stock they had to cover the gap while waiting for the Essential Health Packs...we can’t thank you enough.”
Thanks to our donors, we’ve now provided 16,812 courses of treatment to individuals and families in the Bahamas, many needing urgent, even lifesaving help. The storm left health facilities and systems devastated in central and eastern parts of Grand Bahama, so many treatments will be used here.
International Health Partners provides immediate emergency medicines to people affected by natural disasters. In 2019, we have sent nearly 40,000 treatments to Mozambique and Malawi after Cyclone Idai; and more than 92,000 treatments to Venezuela.
We will continue to support relief efforts in the Bahamas, and plan to send around 60,000 more treatments there in the short term.
Will you support this work to ensure that our life-saving medicines can reach those in desperate need as soon as possible? A gift of £10 will provide at least 30 treatments to communities, like those in the Bahamas, to enable critical healthcare efforts.
Help us deliver access to medicine all year round
Join our giving community and help us transform the health outlook of families every single month.
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See how your donation makes a difference
£5 can help us to give 15 people treatment
£20 will provide 16 children with antibiotics
£100 will provide 83 pregnant women with life saving medicine.
£450 will provide am emergency medical kit to 60 families.
Whatever you give, you could be making a life-changing, even life-saving difference to someone every month.
See how your donation makes a difference
£5 is enough to source and send £600 worth of medical supplies a year to people in need; enough to help approximately 50 people around the world.
£10 is enough to source and send £1,200 worth of medical supplies a year to people in need; enough to help approximately 100 people around the world.
£25 is enough to provide around 750 treatments in a year, helping approximately 250 people in need; and for some, is the difference between life & death.
£100 is enough to provide medicines and supplies for approximately 1,000 people a year living in disaster-hit and vulnerable communites.
Whatever you give, you could be making a life-changing, even life-saving difference to someone every month.
Help us deliver access to medicine all year round
From fundraising to delivering medicines, you can also support our vital work in other ways.
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Fox Court, 14 Gray's Inn Road,
London, WC1X 8HN
United Kingdom
Fox Court, 14 Gray's Inn Road,
London, WC1X 8HN
United Kingdom
