Assessment flights to review the situation

02.11.2011

To be able to gain a picture of the current living conditions of the population and to ensure that aid arrives quickly, leading members of the Humedica and World Concern relief organisations are flying directly into the crisis areas with the Heli Aviation German Help Three helicopter. The urgency and the safety aspect in addition to the presence of the Director of Health and Hygiene for the Garissa province mean that a helicopter is urgently required for this mission.

Nairobi Thursday morning, German Help Three takes off in the direction of Garissa. On board are the East Africa officer and two Country Directors of Humedica and the Country Director of World Concern, leading members of the local aid organisations. The destination is a meeting with the Director of Health and Hygiene of the Kenyan government in the provincial capital of Garissa. Following highly promising discussions, the delegation of the relief organisations also checks the availability of medical care and medicines in the city hospital. This is extremely important in order to be able to plan the further processes of upcoming relief missions. In order to prepare the mission for the next few days, the Heli Aviation crew takes off in the early evening on the home flight to Nairobi. On board is the Humedica delegation which, not least for safety reasons, decided on a late flight. The Kenyan director of World Concern stays and spends the night in Garissa.

Early next morning, German Help Three takes off for further assessment flights. Today, the Humedica Director for East Africa and a Country Director for Kenya are the initial passengers. The World Concern Country Director and the Director for Health and Hygiene of the national government board at a fuel stop in Garissa. Directly after refuelling, the Heli Aviation helicopter takes off on a mission to the remote north-west of the Garissa province.

The destinations of today’s assessment flights are three villages, which are supposed to serve as locations for Medical Referral Centres. With the support of Humedica and Heli Aviation, World Concern would like to set up local health centres there to facilitate faster medical provision and emergency transport to hospitals in Garissa and Nairobi for people in the surrounding areas.

The Heli Aviation helicopter first lands in the villags of Mbalam Bala and Benane. The plan is for these villages to assume key positions in the overall World Concern project and they are inhabited predominantly by young people. Since the settlements no longer have any crop areas available and the animal herds of the population have been decimated by the drought, the supply situation in the villages is very strained.

The inhabitants of the third and final of today's village destinations find themselves in a particularly dramatic situation. Here the effect of the sustained drought on the predominantly nomadic inhabitants of north-east Kenya becomes particularly clear. In order to protect livestock from perishing, the men are forced to move further afield with their herds to find better pastures. Meanwhile, their wives and children must stay behind in provisional tent settlements, with no protection against violent attack.

The supply of such camps cannot be guaranteed by road! The missing roads and the fact that shelter of this type is not marked on maps make it almost impossible for the relief organisations to discover them by the land route and to improve living conditions on-site. All the advantages of helicopters for indentifying such shelters and for supplying the population living in them can be used particularly effectively here. An overview of large land areas can be provided from the air and wide distances, which would be extremely time-consuming to cross or completely impassable in land vehicles, can be crossed quickly and safely by air. Almost daily attacks render the work of relief organisations more difficult. For this reason, local helpers try to avoid journeys by land.

In many discussions with relief organisations it has become clear that helpers in Kenya have to struggle against an additional problem, reaching those who need help in time. Heli Aviation is working with the relief organisations to close these gaps in supply. Help should reach those who urgently need it effectively, quickly and safely. With his statement, the Country Director of World Concern in Kenya supports this view: "The joint mission with Heli Aviation represents a major step in the work of World Concern in this region" – and thus for the people who live here. According to information from Humedica employees, this two-day mission would have taken almost two weeks by land. It is highly probable that the journey would have been impeded by impassable terrain due to strong rainfall or that there would have been a considerable risk of kidnap due to the very low travel speed. It's possible that it might have been necessary to break off the mission completely. But in light of the helicopter mission, the Country Directors of Humedica and World Concern were able to quickly gain an overview of the help urgently required on site. Because of recent attacks on government vehicles, a meeting of relief officers in the crisis area would not have been possible a little while ago. The presence of the Director for Health and Hygiene of the province of Garissa gives hope that relief organisations and government can work closer together in future.

The area surrounded by the planned facilities is especially severely affected by the drought. The hoped-for rainfall does not bring an improvement but a dramatic worsening of living conditions. Heavy rain on the way to the day's first destination makes this clear and emphasises the need for helicopter missions in order to be able to help effectively, quickly and safely.

Sustained hunger and thirst and inadequate hygienic conditions severely weaken the inhabitants of north-east Kenya and make them particularly susceptible to all types of illness. The start of the rainy season and the increase in insects, bacteria and animal carcasses that occurs as a result also greatly increase the risk of infection. The weakened organisms of the people are hardly able to resist even simple flu germs. Due to impassable or missing sand tracks, this acute life-threatening situation often becomes a death sentence for many who have survived the drought.

In co-operation with the relief organisations, it is intended for the Heli Aviation helicopter German Help Three to provide people with help and, even in remote areas, provide effective, fast and safe help from the air, in the same way as its predecessors in many relief missions in Haiti.

Visit German Help Three on Facebook

<- Back to: 2012 Pressemitteilungen