By Joydeep Gupta, IANS
New Delhi : A special emergency fund is being set up by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for 11 disaster-prone Asian countries to rush out aid in the crucial first few days of a calamity striking any of them.
The 11 countries served by the South-East Asia Regional Office (SEARO) of WHO – Bangladesh, Bhutan, East Timor, India, Indonesia, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Sri Lanka and Thailand – suffered 58 percent of all the deaths in the world due to disasters during 1996-2005.
And together they accounted for 44 percent of all the disasters that took place in the world in that decade.
During the crucial first days after a disaster, if a government says it needs something specifically, “within 24 hours we shall release up to $175,000 for the purpose without asking any question,” said Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Deputy Regional Director of WHO-SEARO.
The amount will not be paid in cash, and WHO will use it to immediately procure what the government needs, cutting through the red tape and delays that usually characterise disaster relief.
The health ministers of the 11 countries are meeting in the Bhutanese capital of Thimphu Friday and are expected approve the fund, called South East Asia Region Health Emergency Fund (SEARHEF), which will become operational from the beginning of next year.
“It is most heartening that the countries have decided to put in the money for this fund themselves,” Singh told IANS here. The 11 countries are setting aside one percent of their two-year WHO budget for this fund, which will be administered by the New Delhi-based SEARO.
Experience shows the fund, although small, can mean the difference between life and death in the first few days of a disaster.
“Take the case of the diarrhoea epidemic in Bangladesh after the floods earlier this month,” said Roderico H. Orfin, WHO-SEARO’s Technical Officer for Emergency and Humanitarian Action.
“We knew beforehand that hospitals would need intravenous (IV) fluids, and we had kept them ready. But there were so many patients they still ran out of IV fluids. If we had this fund, we could have got more IV fluids to them as soon as they asked for it.”
The $175,000 given immediately has to be spent in the first month after the disaster, Singh explained. “Then we can give them $175,000 more out of these funds, to be used in the next two months.”
The fund will have $1 million to begin with. But, at $350,000 per disaster, that will not be enough for even three disasters. Asked about this, Singh said, “Once we have this corpus, we are going to ask donors all over the world – including individuals – to add to it.”
Singh felt the creation of the emergency fund would be “one of the most historic things this regional committee will do”. The idea of the fund had originally been proposed during a 2005 meeting of the 11 health ministers in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami that devastated this region.
Ofrin pointed out that in a disaster situation, “the emphasis has to be on preparedness”. And after a disaster, “the small amount you give in the first few days often matters more than the millions you give later”.