Since April 4, Easter Day in this Christian region of Indonesia here in East Sumba, we are on-site, other teams have joined those already present, including human reinforcements to map the situation, a team medical.
Yes, almost 15 days after the natural disaster, the Fair Future Foundation Switzerland is indeed the only international organisation on-site, and all here are facing an immense health, social, infrastructural, and human challenge.
We do the best we can, we go wherever no one goes or can go, in order to provide medical care, bring water, food in large quantities, visit the thousands of people who live without a home, in the mud, without income, with too little food and water. We talk, comfort, but we cannot promise the impossible for us. Rebuild houses, drill wells in the villages, find ways to feed the crops which are dying in the face of the lack of water linked to the rupture of the dam upstream.
The point is, Fair Future has a social and medical center located in the heart of the disaster in East Sumba. When the Swiss foundation asked for help from the “Swiss Humanitarian Aid Corps”, via the Swiss Embassy in Jakarta, we were told that I quote:
“-We thank you for your email and for describing your efforts to help the people affected by the floods on Sumba. We are impressed by your efforts. We have examined your request together with the Swiss Humanitarian Aid Unit and regret to inform you that we are not in a position to pay a contribution….”
Fair Future and the nearly one hundred volunteers who help us on the spot, but also our local foundation “Kawan Baik Indonesia Foundation“, do not really understand the meaning of this answer, except that we interpret it as the easiest. to give, by a simple lack of information.
The fact is that Sumba is isolated, that the majority of the media have focused on the other most affected island, that of Flores also in Indonesia, a little further north. However, the situation here is most tragic, because the dam is broken as we expect in previous News. Water being life, itself responsible for ensuring good health of crops, rice fields, and a life without too many diseases, added the fact that the main river destroyed everything in its path, makes the situation more tragic.
Here in Sumba, we are facing an incredible increase in Covid-19 cases. This has to do with the fact that people come together in a spirit of solidarity, but it is at this moment terrible. This forced many health centers (Puskesmas) to have to close their doors to the public. We must therefore vaccinate the nearly one hundred volunteers who work with us.
What people here and Fair Future need first:
Provide access to water to a large number of villages:
- A well then, to supply water to more than 250 people costs CHF.3,150.- (or IDR. 50,000,000.-);
- A water tank of 5’500 liters fully equipped, with the frame made by us, 5 taps, installed and filled on the site costs CHF.410.- (or IDR 6,500,000.-);
Medicines and medical equipment as we have almost distributed 70% of our reserves:
- To meet the needs of thousands of sick people suffering from nutritional deficiencies, dehydration, skin, and respiratory infections, severe anemia, Fair Future urgently needs medicines and medical equipment:
- Food supplements, vitamins, asthmatics, antiallergics, painkillers, anti-inflammatories, various antibiotics, eye and ear drops including related antibiotics, irons, magnesium, zinc, anti-diarrhea, glucocorticoids, beta-blockers, anti-arrhythmic drugs, cough suppressants, specific pediatric drugs, bronchodilators, expectorants, etc …
- The purchase of medicines and medical disposables in quantity is estimated at nearly CHF 7,500.- (or IDR.119,000,000.-).
This will provide free medical care to more than 2,000 people, children, the elderly, pregnant women in need, the sick, the injured;
For the Foundation Base camp in Lambanapu, we need this:
- Build a shelter (kanopi) for the work of volunteers in front of our base camp. To protect us from the heat of the dust, and to sort out the food and donations we receive from all over the place. This costs CHF 1,050.- (or IDR.17,000,000.-) and must be done as soon as possible;
- Many 200-liter plastic containers to store food before distributing it in affected regions;
Construction of houses:
- To rebuild a house, we can do it for CHF.900.- per house (or IDR.16,000,000.-). A simple house, with a roof, enough to be sheltered, to have an almost normal life;
This is for the most urgent needs.
Thank you so much for helping us. We need medicines, donations, medical supplies, food… Do not forget them!
The Fair Future Foundation team, who wrote this News, directly from the biggest medical, social camp in East Sumba, at Rumah Kambera base camp.
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