From food to medical supplies: How Dubai helps WHO, international groups send tonnes of relief aid to Turkey, Syria
The International Humanitarian City (IHC) has sent a relief flight to Turkey on Thursday and another one is scheduled to fly out on Friday afternoon to Syria, according to a senior official.
The Dubai Media Office announced that the IHC, in collaboration with the World Health Organization, sent the first cargo plane on Wednesday evening with 37 tons of medical kits. Another relief flight to Syria to support international humanitarian agencies is being facilitated with crucial aid such as medicines and essential supplies.
Giuseppe Saba, CEO of IHC, said the aid dispatched included medication kits and supplies that were made available by the World Health Organization. “The International Humanitarian City hosts a large number of United Nations agencies and other international humanitarian organisations, and each one is prepositioning humanitarian aid for emergency response. IHC has an emergency preparedness and response system by the community, which is composed of different organisations and other main actors,” he said.
IHC, as part of the Dubai government, helps by facilitating flights. “This happens quite frequently, such as the air bridge that was organised last September for Pakistan after the heavy floods. This type of assistance goes through the International Humanitarian City for complex emergency and natural disasters,” he explained.
While the two flights are focused on providing medical kits and supplies from the stocks of the World Health Organization, such as those needed for trauma and emergencies, there are other relief flights in the pipeline with other supplies such ready to eat food, tents, blankets and hygiene kits, Giuseppe revealed
The dispatches, he explained, need to be organised in a way that allows time for the distribution in the affected countries by those working in the field. When it comes to the distribution of medical supplies, Giuseppe said that the standard procedure is to hand over the supplies to the health counterparts in the destinations, which are usually the ministries of health.
“We are only a few days from when the disaster took place, and we have already received requests from United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the World Food Program to support them by dispatching aid to both countries. We have a long list; there’s an urgent request for blankets, tents and other materials that are needed in both countries,” he said, adding that the items are ready for dispatch and that they will be sent soon.
“We are waiting for confirmation from the transport; I believe that it will be early next week or even before. We’re just waiting for availability on board aircraft,” said Giuseppe.
International aid workers struggle to reach people affected by the quake
Aid has begun flowing into Turkey and Syria from around the world, but organizations are struggling to reach the most vulnerable. Rescue teams are racing to reach survivors in frigid temperatures, even as the hope of finding people alive is diminishing with every hour.
The U.N. is trying to get into the rebel-held northwestern part of Syria through a humanitarian corridor. Some 4 million internally displaced people there have little heavy machinery of the sort that might be found in other parts of Turkey and Syria, and hospitals are poorly equipped, damaged, or both. Volunteers are digging through rubble with their bare hands.
Dubai is an international aid logistics hub
The WHO’s warehouses are part of a 1.5 million square-ft. zone of Dubai known as International Humanitarian City, the largest humanitarian hub in the world. The zone is also home to warehouses for the U.N. refugee agency, World Food Program, Red Cross and Red Crescent organizations, UNICEF and others.
The government of Dubai covers the cost of storage facilities, utilities and flights carrying relief items into affected areas. The inventory is procured by the agencies themselves.
“The goal is to be ready in case of emergency,” says Giuseppe Saba, the chief executive of International Humanitarian City.
Saba says $150 million worth of emergency stock and assistance is dispatched every year to between 120 and 150 countries. That includes personal protective equipment, tents, food and other critical items needed in climate disasters, medical emergencies and global outbreaks, like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Aid from this location is sent to countries such as Yemen, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Uganda and Haiti.
