Press
NYC MEDICS TREAT 10,000 PATIENTS DURING SUCCESSFUL SECOND DEPLOYMENT
RELIEF WORKERS RETURN HOME, BUT SHELTER MISSION CONTINUES
NEW YORK CITY. A group of Paramedics from New York, joined by doctors and nurses from across the US and Canada returned home from a grueling one month deployment in the rugged Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, an area still recovering from a staggering 6.7 earthquake which claimed tens of thousands of lives and left over 3 million homeless last October.
Last fall, the group, known as NYC Medics sent 13 volunteers to Kashmir in response to a call by the UN's World Health Organization for medical assistance. In two weeks on the ground, the Medics treated two thousand patients, many with injuries being treated for the first time, twenty days following the quake. CBS' 60 MINUTES profiled the group in a special feature, leading to national and international attention.
During the months of December and January of 2006, the newly-formed relief organization raised over $250,000 in cash and some $750,000 of "in-kind" donations from suppliers, hospitals, and even a Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT) which responds to similar crisis on behalf of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the USA. The support came from as far away as Davos Switzerland, as the Disaster Resource Network, an initiative of the World Economic Forum, appropriated $140,000 in emergency funding to support NYC Medics.
"When we left Pakistan in October, we knew that we would have to return with more help," said Nick Lobel-Weiss, NYC Medics Co-Founder. "We contacted everyone we could, explaining the dire and immediate challenges being faced in Pakistan. The response was fantastic."
In February, the first of two teams assembled by NYC Medics deployed to Pakistan. This time they were better prepared with mobile hospital facilities, medical supplies and perhaps most important, Urdu speaking practitioners from across the US. Two weeks later a second NYC Medics team arrived. The volunteers treated some 500 patients per day, almost 10,000 total during their deployment.
The Medics also successfully deployed hundreds of Global Village Shelters donated by the Weyerhaeuser Company to mountain residents who are still homeless with the arrival of the six-month anniversary of the disaster.
The United Nations' International Organization of Migration (IOM) reports that they have managed to help over 700 families return home from tent villages in Batagram, Mansehra and Bagh districts since March 2006. This week it appealed to international and private donors for US$ 4.4 million to continue return operations through December of this year. "Even though we're back in the US, we're working with the IOM and the Pakistan Military Engineers to deploy the Global Village Shelters," Lobel-Weiss commented.
NYC Medics is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to delivering international emergency medical care and related volunteer services in response to natural disasters. NYC Medics' corps of volunteers from hospitals around the New York region is committed to coordinating their efforts with other relief agencies, and to upholding the highest humanitarian principles, aiding all human beings in distress regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, religion, or political affiliation.
