Particularly Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia are headed towards a humanitarian crisis due to drought. The Red Cross provides relief aid to the areas in most critical condition.
The Finnish Red Cross launches an emergency appeal for funds on March 14. The Finnish Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund needs donations to prepare for helping victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
Each morning around six o’clock, Finnish Red Cross aid worker Pauli Immonen wakes up in his tent at the Port-au-Prince airport. Having had breakfast, he is off to the logisticians’ meeting at the nerve centre of the International Red Cross, the main camp, from which the Haiti operation is coordinated.
Over a two-week period, Finns have donated some EUR 2,5 million to the Finnish Red Cross Haiti Collection. Until now, funded by the Finnish Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund, the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and ECHO, the FRC has sent to Haiti a mobile clinic, a field hospital operating theatre, a hospital ward with 100 beds, aid supplies, and 34 aid workers
The International Red Cross is preparing to help quake victims in Haiti over at least a three-year period. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies estimate that some 60,000 families, or some 300,000 people, are in need of aid. The IFRC now estimates that providing them with aid over three years will cost a total of EUR 73 million.
A second batch of relief supplies leaves the Finnish Red Cross logistics centre in Tampere today, en route to Haiti. The supplies, including 240 family tents big enough to house a family of six, are first transported to Berlin by lorry. Also bound for Germany are 600 tarpaulins which can be used to build temporary shelters. In Berlin the Finnish supplies will join a German Red Cross field hospital and be flown to Port-au-Prince.
On Friday, 15 January 2010, the Finnish Red Cross has sent a mobile clinic to the earthquake zone in Haiti. A total of twelve aid workers have also been sent to Haiti to get the clinic up and running, and will then work in it. Eight of the aid workers are from Finland, two from Sweden and two from France.
The Finnish Red Cross continues its efforts in Jokela. The Red Cross stand-by team of psychologists provides support for students and teachers at the Jokela School Centre to help them carry on with their daily lives.
