Direct Relief’s Response to California Wildfires

Direct Relief is headquartered approximately 45 miles north of the fire, and is deploying staff and resources to assist residents, emergency responders, and firefighters battling the blaze. Direct Relief is in the process of delivering 3M-donated N95 respirators to help people at risk from wildfire smoke, essential hygeine items for evacuees in shelters, and emergency medical supplies to support first responders and healthcare professionals in the affected area.

Direct Relief is in frequent contact with state and local organizations to gauge needs and offer support, including to the Ventura County Office of Emergency Services, California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, California Primary Care Association, and California Association of Free and Charitable Clinics. Offers have also been made to local safety clinics and partners to provide assistance as needs arise, and the organization stands ready to make more masks available to residents should air quality deteriorate further.

Support for Healthcare Facilities in Emergencies

As part of Direct Relief’s commitment to enhancing resilience in the face of natural disasters, the organization’s Power for Health initiative has equipped healthcare facilities across California with solar and battery storage systems. This initiative ensures that health centers and free clinics can continue operating during power outages, allowing them to provide uninterrupted care to vulnerable populations during wildfire events and other emergencies. Direct Relief’s recent projects include installations at community health centers in Santa Maria and Simi Valley, strengthening critical healthcare infrastructure when it is most needed.

Wildfire Response Expertise

Direct Relief has a long history of responding to wildfires in California, from the devastating Camp Fire to recent fires across the state. Through partnerships with local agencies and healthcare facilities, the organization has provided personal protective equipment, medical supplies, and financial support to aid communities impacted by wildfires. Direct Relief remains ready to respond to the ongoing Mountain Fire and to continue supporting impacted communities.

The post Direct Relief Responding as Mountain Fire Explodes in Ventura County, Calif., 0% Contained appeared first on Direct Relief.

• Hurricane Beryl: After clearing a devastating path through the Caribbean, Beryl struck Texas Monday morning as a Category 1 storm, flooding streets and cutting off power for 1.5 million residents.
• Western Wildfires: A series of fast-burning wildfires ignited across California over the 4th of July weekend, as the state withered under record-breaking heat.

Direct Relief’s Response to Hurricane Beryl

Texas Hurricane Relief

• Direct Relief has pre-positioned medical supplies in the path of the storm. The supplies, which include more than 200 medical items and supplies to support care for up to 100 people for 72 hours, are staged at healthcare facilities in Texas and throughout the Gulf, ensuring immediate availability post-storm.
• Direct Relief is preparing to deliver an initial ten shipments of requested medical aid to health facilities in communities affected by Beryl.
• Direct Relief has offered additional medical resources to the Texas Association of Community Health Centers (TACHC), the Texas Association of Charitable Clinics (TXACC), and other local partners.
• Direct Relief is in close contact with healthcare organizations and emergency responders in Texas to address medical needs that arise.

Caribbean Hurricane Relief

• Direct Relief has dispatched medical packs to St. Vincent and Grenada from its stockpile in St. Lucia.
• Twenty medical tents and patient beds are bound for Grenada and St. Vincent from Direct Relief’s logistics hub in Puerto Rico.
• Direct Relief is preparing a substantial delivery of acute care medications to Jamaica in response to a request from the Ministry of Health.
• Direct Relief is collaborating with Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) to supply oral rehydration salts (ORS), medical-grade refrigerators, and other crucial supplies to St. Vincent, addressing urgent healthcare needs.

Assessing Beryl’s Impact and Post-Storm Needs

• Across Jamaica and Grenada, the storm has resulted in significant power outages, disrupting healthcare services.
• Several hospitals and health facilities were damaged by the storm, and much of the population is cut off from essential services due to damaged roads and other infrastructure.
• Direct Relief is working with local and regional health agencies to restore medical services and supply essential medicines.
• Direct Relief continues to monitor Beryl’s impact to assess health and emergency needs on the ground and is prepared to respond as needed.

Wildfires Impacting California

Twenty wildfires are burning across California, stretching emergency resources, forcing thousands to evacuate, and blanketing much of the state in a fog of smoke.

These include:

• The Lake Fire in Santa Barbara County: Burning in a rugged area of Santa Barbara County, about fifty miles north of Direct Relief’s headquarters, the Lake Fire has scorched 20,320 acres to become the largest wildfire of the season. As of Monday morning, the fire was 8% contained.
• The Thompson Fire in Butte County: Over 13,000 residents were under evacuation orders over the July 4th weekend due to a wildfire in Butte County, California, which was more than 80% contained as of July 7. The Thompson Fire, which broke out on the morning of July 2, burned over 3,700 acres near the City of Oroville.
• The Royal Fire in Tahoe National Forest: Burning in remote and difficult to reach location, the Royal Fire spans 168 acres and was 0% contained as of Monday morning, according to Cal Fire.

Direct Relief’s Response to California Wildfires

• Direct Relief is in contact with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) to offer support and has extended offers of medical aid to community health centers, clinics, and other healthcare providers within fifty miles of the fires.
• The organization is also in touch with national, state, and regional health centers, as well as free and charitable clinic associations.
• Direct Relief maintains a stockpile of medications ready for rapid deployment, including emergency medical packs and wildfire kits.
• In partnership with 3M, Direct Relief is making N95 respirators available to those affected by wildfire smoke, including individuals with chronic conditions and others most at risk during extreme heat and wildfire events. On Monday, Direct Relief provided more than one thousand N95 masks to the Santa Barbara Office of Emergency Management. More masks are available for residents should air quality deteriorate further.
• To avoid the consequences of power loss to healthcare providers and patients, Direct Relief has worked to equip healthcare facilities in communities at high fire risk with resilient power systems, including battery backups and solar panels, ensuring continuous care.

The post Hurricane Beryl and California Wildfires: Direct Relief Mobilizes Aid for Dual Crises appeared first on Direct Relief.

Distribution of the 73 pallets has begun with the products resupplying field hospitals, mobile medical units, and primary health tents in shelters both in Rafah (Southern) and Deir al-Balah (Central) Gaza. The aid delivery also includes medications to benefit thousands of individuals with chronic diseases, cardiovascular ailments, and injuries, as well as prenatal vitamins and water purification tablets.

Medical items include:

• Diabetes medications and supplies for managing a chronic condition that affects thousands in Gaza
• Drugs to prevent heart failure for individuals suffering from cardiac conditions
• Syringes and needles for administering medications and providing necessary medical care in Gaza
• Sutures and wound care for treating injuries and ensuring proper wound healing in Gaza, where access to medical supplies is limited
• Prenatal vitamins for the health and well-being of pregnant women in Gaza, where access to proper nutrition is a challenge
• Personal protective gear for healthcare workers in Gaza to protect themselves and prevent the spread of diseases
• Water purification tablets and oral rehydration salts for preventing waterborne diseases and treating people for dehydration

As with previous shipments, this delivery to Gaza was the result of weeks of ongoing coordination with various national governments, international agencies, and on-the-ground organizations.

The medical aid that arrived today was airlifted to Jordan from Direct Relief’s California headquarters and distribution center earlier this month. Upon arrival in Jordan, the supplies were received by Anera, which arranged their transport to Egypt. From there, the 73 pallets were divided into three deliveries and driven across the border into Gaza.

The third and final aid truckload arrived safely this morning at Anera’s warehouse in Rafah, Southern Gaza, bringing much-needed aid to civilians facing a dire and still-unfolding humanitarian situation.

Anera, a key regional partner of Direct Relief, is a U.S.-based nonprofit with a longstanding, robust presence and record of providing humanitarian aid in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, and Lebanon.

By the numbers: Today’s shipment brings the total amount of aid delivered by Direct Relief to Gaza over the past five months to 37 tons and more than $24 million in value.

Regional assistance: Direct Relief supported Israel with both financial and medical material assistance in the wake of the deadly October 7 attack by Hamas, including equipping a 50-bed emergency medical field hospital, delivering dozens of emergency medical packs, and granting $1.6 million in financial aid for first responders and trauma and psychosocial support for survivors.

Direct Relief has also supported the efforts of Anera in the West Bank with 10 tons of requested medical items, including prenatal vitamins, IV solution, and more. Amid a rise in tension and conflict regionally, Direct Relief is responding to humanitarian needs across multiple locations, including Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen.

What’s next: Direct Relief is also continuing to work with its partners in Gaza and throughout the region to mobilize and coordinate the delivery of more requested medical aid.

This month, Direct Relief signed an agreement with the International Organization of Migration, which will strengthen both organizations to quickly respond to emergency needs, including those in Gaza.

Direct Relief, an apolitical, non-sectarian, and nongovernmental humanitarian aid organization, is committed to responding to health needs and requests for support in Gaza and across the region. All Direct Relief shipments to Gaza and elsewhere in the region will continue to be coordinated and delivered in accordance with U.S. sanctions laws and with necessary approvals from Israeli and Egyptian authorities.

The post Latest Medical Aid Shipment Arrives in Gaza appeared first on Direct Relief.

The shipments contained 10.4 million defined daily doses of medication, including prenatal vitamins, naloxone, PPE, antibiotics and more.

Responding to Smoke from Canadian Fires

In response to widespread smoke impacts in U.S. cities in the Northeast and Midwest, Direct Relief has dispatched shipments of medical aid to health centers in New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, with more to come. Air purifiers, N95 masks, respiratory and ophthalmic medications are bound for health centers in smoke-impacted areas.

To understand the spread of smoke from the wildfires burning in Canada, Direct Relief created a map that illustrates how a wildfire’s impact extends far beyond its burn perimeter. Smoke is now blanketing highly populated areas as far as 700 miles away, from Ottawa, Canada, to North Carolina, with severe health implications, particularly for children and older adults with pre-existing heart and lung disease, pregnant women, people who work outside, and people with low incomes.

Read more here.

Direct Relief will continue to respond as requested.

Responding to Dam Explosion in Ukraine

Direct Relief is currently responding to requests for medications and funding following the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine. Waters reportedly rose as much as 10 feet above normal levels in parts of the Kherson region, prompting a massive exodus of people.

Nick Allen, a program reporting analyst for Direct Relief, is in the region assessing needs and communicating health needs to local nonprofits that Direct Relief supports with medical supplies.

Read more here.

earthquake response in Turkey and Syria

Direct Relief this week announced the latest round of financial support to local health providers and first responders in Turkey and Syria, $2 million in total, as the region continues to recover from a devastating series of earthquakes.

The death toll from the Feb. 6, 2023 earthquake has risen to more than 50,000, with more than 200,000 injured. Direct Relief is focused on mental health services and psychosocial support for people impacted by the quakes, maternal and child health, surgery services for those injured and needing rehabilitation, and bolstering primary care services.

Read more here.

Direct Relief and oecs Renew Partnership

The Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, or OECS, and Direct Relief have renewed their partnership for emergency preparation and response. Renewal of the original 2019 agreement will allow the two organizations to deepen their regionwide approach to helping small island nations in the Caribbean prepare for and respond to hurricanes and other natural disasters.

Warmer oceans caused by climate change have increased the severity of the hurricanes that batter the region year after year. The Caribbean experienced 70 named tropical cyclones across 19 countries between 1980 and 2019.

The original 2019 partnership agreement enabled Direct Relief to strengthen its emergency preparation and response capabilities across the Caribbean following 2017’s Hurricanes Irma and Maria, which devastated islands across the region. Direct Relief collaborated directly with the Ministries of Health in Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands and the Commonwealth of Dominica to respond to the 2017 hurricanes, leading to the broader partnership with the OECS.

OPERATIONAL SNAPSHOT

WORLDWIDE

This week, Direct Relief shipped 6.6 million defined daily doses of medication outside the U.S.

Countries that received medical aid over the past week included:

• Uganda
• Palestinian Territories
• Ukraine
• Peru
• Pakistan
• Turkey
• Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Malawi
• Lebanon
• Dominican Republic
• El Salvador
• Syria

UNITED STATES

Direct Relief delivered 451 shipments containing more than 8.5 tons of medications over the past week to organizations, including the following:

• JFK Global Prayer Ministry, Texas
• LaSante Health Center, New York
• Community Medical Wellness Centers USA, California
• A+ Counseling Center and A+ Health Center, Maryland
• Alpha Omega Alliance Inc dba Riviera Beach Integrated Care, Florida
• Wesley Community and Health Centers, Arizona
• End Overdose, California
• FAVOR Upstate, South Carolina
• Pocatello Free Clinic, Idaho
• Hope Clinic, North Carolina

YEAR-TO-DATE (GLOBAL)

Since Jan. 1, 2023, Direct Relief has delivered 7,945 shipments to 1,748 healthcare providers in 54 U.S. states and territories and 64 countries.

These shipments contained 260.2 million defined daily doses of medication valued at $863.3 million (wholesale), totaling 3.2 million lbs.

The post Response to Smoke from Canadian Fires, Dispatches from Ukraine Dam Explosion, and More appeared first on Direct Relief.

Approximately 100 million people, or nearly a third of the U.S. population, have been under heavy smoke conditions over the past two days, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. Cloudy skies and low air quality have been reported as a danger and looming health issue.

The National Weather Service has reported air quality alerts for the Great Lakes region and parts of the Northeast, particularly Illinois, Michigan, and New York.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has cautioned that residents in some areas should avoid all outdoor physical activity due to Air Quality Index measures of 301 or higher in ozone and particle pollution. The EPA’s Fire and Smoke map allows residents to view hourly-reported air quality conditions by searching for a city, state or area.

The EPA encourages those who may be affected by smoke-related air quality conditions to wear protective gear like N95 masks, reduce strenuous activity outside, and reschedule outdoor work tasks or take frequent breaks.

WILDFIRES AND HEALTH

Compromised air quality can cause major health impacts for people living with respiratory conditions, like asthma, groups including young children and older adults, and those with cardiovascular illnesses.

Wildfire smoke has been linked to “significant” increases, within a day or two of the event, in hospital emergency departments.

Wildfires can also force mass evacuations, during which people may be cut off from essential medications to manage chronic diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure. Fire-related power outages can also cause people to spiral into medical crises when they are without the power needed for electricity-powered medical devices needed for oxygen delivery, cold storage for temperature-sensitive insulin and more.

DIRECT RELIEF’S RESPONSE

Direct Relief is communicating with primary care associations to assess medical needs and is currently preparing shipments of N95 masks for health centers.

The organization is in contact with primary care associations in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, as well as the Canadian Association of Community Health Centers.

Direct Relief responds to wildfires each year during fire season, including those that impact the Western U.S. The organization maintains a stockpile of N95 masks at its California warehouse for distribution and also manages an inventory of critical medicines often requested during fires, including asthma medications and diseases for chronic diseases often requested when people are forced to evacuate.

The organization will continue responding as needed.

The post Nearly One-Third of U.S. Population Under Heavy Smoke Conditions Due to Wildfires appeared first on Direct Relief.

A combination of existing relationships with disaster response agencies, safety net health clinics, and government agencies, as well as data analysis and pre-positioned supplies, have enabled Direct Relief to respond efficiently and precisely to requests after each incident.

For the latest news and response information, please read below:

TENNESSEE FLOODING

THE SITUATION

• A deluge of rainfall caused deadly flash floods in west Tennessee over the weekend.
• At least twenty-one people were killed as a result, and 40 remained missing as of Monday. Authorities reported that the majority of the fatalities were from the town of Waverly, located about 65 miles west of Nashville.
• Several counties were under emergency orders Monday, thousands in the region were without power and many connecting roads and bridges were destroyed or damaged.
• Several shelters in the area had also been activated for evacuees.

TENNESSEE FLOODING RESPONSE

• Direct Relief has been in communication with the Tennessee Primary Care Association, the Tennessee Red Cross, and the Tennessee Emergency Management Association to assess current medical needs and offer support.
• Offers are also being extended to health center partner facilities in the impacted areas and Direct Relief will respond as requested.

HAITI EARTHQUAKE

THE SITUATION

• A 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on August 14 at 8:30 a.m. local time.
• The earthquake’s epicenter was 77 miles west of the capital Port-au-Prince, in the vicinity of Petit-Trou-de-Nippes.
• The death toll continues to climb, exceeding 2,000, with more than 12,000 injured, many in critical condition.
• Tropical Depression Grace, while less severe than feared, caused flooding in earthquake-affected communities including Jacmel, Les Cayes, and Marigot, further compounding the humanitarian situation.
• The flooding combined with a lack of shelter and access to clean water and sanitation drastically increases the risk of Covid-19, cholera, and other disease outbreaks.
• Initial rapid assessments indicate that the earthquake destroyed 61,000 homes and damaged another 76,000.
• The quake also affected 24 health facilities in the Sud, Nippes, and Grand’Anse departments, damaging the infrastructure of 20 while destroying four, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
• The widespread need for medical care in the aftermath of the earthquake and widespread damage to health infrastructure is making healthcare services and medical supplies a critical focus of the overall emergency response.
• According to OCHA, in the three hardest-hit areas, the health system has been severely impaired as health needs grow, making humanitarian interventions in health a critical priority to ensure access to life-saving care and other vital services.
• Ongoing insecurity in the country, including gang control of the main roads leading to the affected areas, further complicates the response. Aid is currently being transported through gang areas in convoys, though security issues remain a significant impediment.

HAITI EARTHQUAKE RESPONSE

• More than 192 pallets-worth of medical aid from Direct Relief totaling $12.8M has arrived recently in Haiti, is en route, or is ready for deployment.
• Direct Relief is mobilizing a FedEx humanitarian emergency MD-11 aid charter of urgently needed medical supplies to Haiti (ETA 1 p.m. on August 26). The flight will hold roughly 140 pallets of antibiotics, wound care items, PPE, diagnostic supplies, medical-grade freezers, IV fluids, medical relief packs, and essential medications.
• Inbound emergency shipments will be stored at Direct Relief’s Haiti warehouse and distributed by Direct Relief’s Port au Prince-based staff, enabling healthcare providers to continue providing life-saving services to their communities and patients from areas with damaged or destroyed health infrastructure.
• Health facilities being supported include St. Boniface, Saint Luke’s, Albert Schweitzer, & Saint Damien’s Hospitals, the Haitian Ministry of Health, Gheskio, CORE Haiti, Project Medishare, PAHO, and others.
• Six pallets containing emergency backpacks, tents, and hygiene kits will arrive early next week in Les Cayes by private charter to the Colorado Haiti Project in Petit-Trou-de-Nippes, located near the earthquake’s epicenter.
• Emergency medical supplies, which Direct Relief prepositioned at Saint Damien’s Hospital in Port au Prince, are now deployed to Les Cayes to support medical relief efforts.
• Critical medicine and supplies from Direct Relief were routed to Port au Prince this week by PAHO from its Panama UN Humanitarian Response Depot.
• This week, seven pallets of PPE, medical relief backpacks, and emergency shelters arrived at St. Boniface from Direct Relief’s Puerto Rico distribution hub. Direct Relief also provided $250,000 in emergency operational cash support to the St. Boniface Hospital in Fond-des-Blancs.

CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES

THE SITUATION

• The Dixie Fire is now the second-largest fire incident in California’s recorded history, having burned 730,600 acres in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Butte, Plumas, Lassen, Tehama, and Shasta counties.
• It is the largest single fire in California history.
• Started on July 13, 2021, it is currently at 35% containment
• Winds of up to 40 miles per hour have hindered containment, even as 6,000 firefighters are assigned to the fire.
• More than 650 homes and 1,200 structures have been destroyed.
• More than 8,000 residents are currently evacuated.
• Four firefighters were injured battling the fire in early August after a tree fell on them.
• According to the National Interagency Fire Center, more than 440 fires are actively burning in the US, with major blazes concentrated in Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and California. More than 3.2 million acres have been burned this year.

CALIFORNIA FIRE RESPONSE

• Direct Relief sent an alert to more than 30 health centers, free clinics, and public health departments in Northern California to query if any would like to request aid.
• Direct Relief has committed an initial $1 million to help support safety net clinics and responders.
• Direct Relief has made the following materials available to partners in the impacted area: KN95 masks (1.3 million masks) and N95 masks (about 100,000 masks), 20 Wildfire Health Kits, insulin, oxygen concentrators (518 units), psychiatric/mental health medicines, hygiene kits, backpacks, inhalers, steroids, tetanus vaccine, personal care products.
• Direct Relief’s emergency-response activities also include synthesizing a broad range of public and private data sources to map and analyze wildfire risk, social vulnerability, and population movement in fire-affected areas.

NORTH CAROLINA FLOODING

THE SITUATION

• Tropical Storm Fred crossed through western North Carolina on Wednesday night, killing at least two people.
• Heavy rain caused severe flooding across many areas in the western part of the state.
• Twenty people are missing, leading to fears that the death toll could rise.
• Nearly 100 people needed rescue from historic flooding along the Pigeon River, which runs through the Appalachian Mountains, impacted several towns, including Cruso and Bethel, NC.
• Officials estimated that the damage had displaced about 500 families, and some lost their homes.
• Transportation throughout the area is challenging, with rockslides and flooding impacting roads, and around ten bridges have been damaged or destroyed.

NORTH CAROLINA FLOODING RESPONSE

• Direct Relief is in communication with the North Carolina Primary Care Association and is fulfilling requests for assistance.
• Five Direct Relief Hurricane Preparedness Packs are pre-positioned in coastal North Carolina.
• Direct Relief will maintain contact with health facilities in the impacted area and assist as needed.

TROPICAL STORM HENRI

THE SITUATION

• New England is bracing for its first hurricane landfall in 30 years this weekend as Tropical Storm Henri is expected to increase to hurricane strength before making landfall on Sunday or Monday somewhere in Southern New England.
• The last hurricane to make landfall in New England was Hurricane Bob as a category-two hurricane in 1991.
• Hurricane and storm surge watches are already in place for most of Long Island and southern New England, from New Haven, Conn. to Sagamore Beach, Mass. (including Block Island, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket).
• Dangerous storm surge conditions are possible beginning Sunday for the region, with flash, urban, and river flooding forecasts through Monday.
• Strong winds, heavy rain, and a storm surge of up to 5 feet above ground level are expected in southern New England, western Long Island and Cape Cod.
• The timing of landfall is also expected to coincide with an astronomical high tide increasing the likelihood of significant storm surge, coastal flooding and erosion.
• The funnel-like geography of Narragansett Bay, R.I., and Buzzards Bay, Mass., could also exacerbate the storm surge impact in these areas.
• Previous storms to hit the Northeast in recent years, including Sandy, Irene, and Lee, were tropical storm strength (or lower) when making landfall in the northeast, but all did considerable damage to coastal communities and resulted in significant damage to communities as far inland as Vermont and Upstate New York.

HENRI RESPONSE

• Direct Relief is monitoring the track and intensity of this hurricane as it approaches the Northeastern United States.
• Direct Relief is in communication with several healthcare providers in New York and New England to support if needed as the hurricane makes landfall and moves inland.

The post Direct Relief Emergency Situation Report (8.23.2021) appeared first on Direct Relief.

The eruptions began on Friday, a day after the volcano was determined to be an imminent threat and evacuations of the area began. Approximately 16,000 people have been evacuated thus far, although unknown numbers have refused to leave.

Even aside from the immediate threats to those in the area, the volcano poses a much larger health risk. Eruptions have caused the ash that first rose miles into the air to rain down on St. Vincent and even on neighboring countries, creating conditions that are especially dangerous to people with respiratory conditions and other health concerns. The nation’s food and water supplies have been compromised by the contamination, according to the Associated Press.

Direct Relief began responding to the crisis on Thursday. A nine-pallet shipment, organized in consultation with St. Vincent’s chief pharmacist, is currently being readied for shipment to the nearby nation of St. Lucia. There, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, a Direct Relief partner, will deliver it to St. Vincent’s Ministry of Health, Wellness, and the Environment.

The shipment contains respiratory medications, N95 masks, burn creams, cots, first aid kits, hygiene supplies, and two Direct Relief wildfire kits. Wildfires and volcanoes pose many of the same health risks, including respiratory complications; skin burns and irritation; contaminated water supplies; and exacerbation of chronic health conditions like diabetes and heart disease, as many people evacuate without their medications.

In addition, the organization has prepared a four-pallet shipment for shipment to Barbados, where the Pan American Health Organization, the branch of the World Health Organization focused on the Americas, will receive it. That shipment includes more wildfire kits, PPE, and emergency medical backpacks intended for first responders working in the field to respond to medical needs.

Two Direct Relief donations not originally intended for the eruption will also be partially diverted to response efforts. Two containers of personal protective equipment (PPE) are scheduled to arrive in St. Lucia on Wednesday. The Barbados Defense Force, which is deploying to St. Vincent in response to the volcano, received a significant donation from Direct Relief in March to support its work during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The organization is preparing to provide additional supplies if requested, including tents, PPE, emergency medical backpacks, water, and more.

The post Amid St. Vincent’s Volcano Eruptions, Response Efforts Continue appeared first on Direct Relief.

1,300 km away in Uganda, the government has decreed that CHWs will be at the center of its new Covid-19 initiative. Prime Minister Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda launched the new national strategy, in which CHWs will be paid a monthly allowance to fight Covid-19 at the community level. Many of those workers are expected to rely on the more than 6.6 million pieces of PPE that CAF-Africa has delivered to Uganda since the initiative was launched in August.

CAF-Africa is working to safeguard essential health services during the Covid-19 pandemic by providing PPE to up to 1 million CHWs in 20 African countries for one year. These workers provide health services to over 400 million people across Africa in communities otherwise underserved by formal health systems. CHWs contribute to significant improvements in health priority areas such as child nutrition, maternal and child health, expanding access to family planning services, and enhancing infectious disease control for HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis. CAF-Africa is the only known effort to date that pools resources to provide CHWs in Africa with PPE.

“We have painful evidence of how disruptive infectious outbreaks are to routine essential health services, the preservation of life, and livelihoods,” said Jourdan McGinn, deputy executive director, Partners In Health, Sierra Leone. “Community health workers monitor, screen, refer, educate, and support families about Covid-19. When we ask them to work without PPE, we are putting them and their families at risk.”

The government of the DRC in October began a polio campaign that will vaccinate children in five provinces through the end of 2020. Over 8,500 CHWs in DRC will be administering polio vaccines, using face shields from CAF-Africa. In the coming months, CHWs in DRC will also be receiving face masks and gloves for routine health services.

“My fear was that I would miss out on the protective equipment, and if I didn’t apply the hygiene and barrier measures, I could get the coronavirus and pass it on to the children I vaccinate,” said Bibolo Mbo Odile, CHW in DRC. “Fortunately I now have the protective equipment. I’ve been a CHW since 2003, and all this time if I continue to do this job because I love this job.”

Twelve countries have received up to a six-month supply of PPE so far, including Côte D’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Togo and Zimbabwe.

Over the coming weeks, CAF-Africa is mobilizing additional resources to get PPE to CHWs in Angola, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia.

“In responding to emergencies, it’s very important to act both thoughtfully and quickly and not be paralyzed by indecision,” said Thomas Tighe, President, and CEO of Direct Relief, which anchored CAF-Africa with a $10 million commitment and has managed the PPE purchasing. “This Fund has made a big impact quickly, but there is much work to be done. Community health workers are essential to public health efforts.”

To date, CAF-Africa has raised $14.6 million and has received more than $5 million in in-kind donations. As of Oct. 1, as part of this effort, the World Food Programme has funded 11 flights carrying 275.6 tons of PPE from China to countries across Africa.

“The United Nations World Food Programme is proud to have supported CAF-Africa in the delivery of essential protective items to aid these countries in their fight against Covid-19,” said Alex Marianelli, WFP Director of Supply Chain. “Working together as a humanitarian community is key to this response, and this collaboration is a great example of that.”

The post Donated PPE Protects Health Workers in Africa during Polio Vaccination Campaign, Covid-19 Response appeared first on Direct Relief.

The spike in recent cases has exacerbated chronic shortages of PPE, particularly in hotspots, in response to which Direct Relief has intensified emergency deliveries of PPE and other essential medications to U.S. health facilities requesting help. The organization has continuously shipped PPE, essential medicines and other requested items to health providers in all 50 U.S. states and territories since the start of the pandemic.

Over the last two weeks, the organization has shipped 282 shipments of medical aid, amounting to 26,937 pounds, to 246 hospitals, community health centers, free clinics, public health departments, and other health safety net facilities in the United States. These shipments contained specifically requested medications and supplies, such as N95 masks, surgical masks, face shields, isolation gowns, gloves, coveralls, thermometers, pulse oximeters, antibiotics, and vaccines for healthcare employees.

Ongoing Support to New Areas of Concern

Another infusion of PPE from Direct Relief is currently underway in response to requests from areas experiencing a “third wave” of infections.

Hospitals in El Paso, Texas have requested support recently, including the El Paso Medical Center, which received three portable ventilators and five oxygen concentrators to assist a surge in patients. A shipment containing 4,800 N95 masks and 300 pulse oximeters is also being prepared for the hospital currently. Primary care in the area was also on the receiving end of Direct Relief support, as El Paso health center, Centro San Vicente, also received an infusion of support this week, including critical PPE, including gowns, face shields, and N95 masks.

Shipments also departed for Montana, including to Kalispell Regional Healthcare, which requested nearly 10,000 N95 masks, face shields, thermometers, gowns and pulse oximeters. Benefis Hospital in Great Falls, and Marias Medical Center in Shelby, are also receiving PPE and other requested medical aid. Direct Relief staff have also reached out to hospitals in Cut Bank, Browning and Harve and are ready to respond to any requests. In Idaho, Bronner General Hospital in Sandpoint and St. Luke’s in Boise, will also be receiving PPE support in the coming weeks.

In New York, Brownsville Health Center in Brooklyn will be receiving N95s and surgical masks to support their work. The health center has provided expanded testing in the area, while maintaining ongoing services for primary, specialty, dental and mental health services, creating a need for PPE support.

The Response to Date, with More to Come

Since the start of the pandemic, Direct Relief has sent more than 24,000 shipments containing more than 43 million masks, 7 million gloves and millions of other PPE items, to more than 1,900 health facilities throughout the U.S. and world.

As the winter months begin and the pandemic continues, the organization stands ready to respond as needed.

The post Direct Relief Boosts PPE Deliveries to Hotspots as Covid-19 Cases Reach New Highs in U.S. appeared first on Direct Relief.

The fires, which have burned more than 27,700 acres mostly in Orange County, have not destroyed any homes, but have led to polluted air. On Monday, the South Coast Air Quality Management District rated air quality throughout Orange County as “hazardous.”

The polluted air has led to upticks in calls and requests for Covid-19 tests by patients at community health centers in the area, according to Izabella Sahakian, operations manager at Families Together, which runs two nonprofit health centers in Orange County. The clinic’s Tustin location is about seven miles away from the edge of the Silverado Fire.

“Patients are calling because they’re having a hard time breathing. They can’t tell if its anxiety, they’re getting shortness of breath, they’re getting a cough, they’re panicking. So, we’ve been doing a lot of telehealth visits with our providers,” Sahakian told Direct Relief.

“Covid complicates things by patients panicking because they can’t tell the difference when they’re getting shortness of breath: is it the forest fire or is it Covid or is it respiratory infection?” she said.

Sahakian said patients have also been calling to seek refills of medication, which the clinic is helping to fill. The staff is maintaining operations while several staff members are out of the office, as they have either been evacuated or are helping relatives look after their homes. “Everyone is helping answer phones,” Sahakian said. “We’re doing the best we can.”

Families Together is further supporting their community by setting up their mobile units at local evacuation shelters and homeless shelters to offer clinical services and flu shots as well as to distribute items such as children’s medications, over the counter medications, personal hygiene kits, pulse oximeters, and masks that were delivered by Direct Relief’s Emergency Response Team yesterday. The team also delivered a donated generator which will help power the mobile units.

Should the clinic lose power in the future, the generator can also help preserve vaccines and medications that need to be cooled as well as maintain computer access to medical records.

Though winds had blown the worst of the smoke away from the clinic and its neighborhood on Wednesday, leading to blue skies, small pieces of white ash continued to fall and the air quality was rated as “unhealthy for sensitive groups” by the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

On Tuesday, Direct Relief delivered requested supplies to Lestonnac Free Clinic in the City of Orange, which only serves uninsured patients. The clinic is based about eight miles away from the Silverado Fire. Included in the delivery was a remote video and audio interface that will allow the clinic’s 300 volunteer doctors to treat patients across the state.

“We’re able to provide all the different doctors you can imagine at a location that needs the help,” said Edward Gerber, executive director of the clinic. Gerber said he hoped to add this remote capability prior to the pandemic, due to long-standing challenges of getting specialists doctors to more remote parts of the state, especially during a crisis.

These latest round of wildfires mark a continuation of a year that has seen record-setting blazes across the state, which have killed at least 30 people. The fires this years have burned over 4 million acres destroyed over 10,000 structures, according to Cal Fire.

The post With Fires Raging Just Miles Away, Health Facilities Step Up for Patients appeared first on Direct Relief.

With thousands evacuated and the health impacts of smoke, displacement, and the ongoing pandemic converging, Direct Relief has been responding to the medical needs of communities most impacted.

So far this wildfire season, Direct Relief has supported more than 30 health centers, public emergency response offices, and county health departments across California and the Western U.S. with more than 80 deliveries of protective gear, respiratory aids, ophthalmic products, tetanus vaccines, and other requested medicines and supplies.

As the fires rage on, requests remain high for medical supplies for patients with breathing issues – like asthma, often exacerbated by the thick, toxic air accompanying the blazes.

Respiratory medications, like albuterol and inhalers, are in currently high demand from local health providers, as are N95 respirators to filter out smoke, said Leighton Jones, U.S. Director of Emergency Response for Direct Relief. Air quality continues to register as “unhealthy” in many parts of the state.

Another concern, compounded by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, are the health impacts facing evacuees. When residents are forced to evacuate, care for chronic conditions may be interrupted. If evacuees experience a disruption in their insulin supply or medicine for high blood pressure or asthma, once-manageable conditions can quickly escalate, prompting an emergency room visit, even as local health systems reach critical capacity.

On Monday, Jones outlined a few of many shipments departing for health providers on the frontlines of the devastating fires.

California

In Napa and Sonoma Counties, the Glass Fire has destroyed nearly 500 homes across both counties, and more than 70,000 people have been told to evacuate.

One health center serving evacuees is OLE Health, a federally qualified health center, in Napa County. The health center has four locations throughout the area, including in Calistoga, just east of where the Glass Fire began. The town’s 5,000-plus residents have been told to evacuate, and Direct Relief is processing shipments of medical aid to assist with OLE Health’s efforts.

Ongoing shipments of medical aid have also been reaching the Santa Rosa Community Health Center in neighboring Sonoma County, where fire activity has been extensive, and devastating, in recent years. The Tubbs Fire, which ravaged Sonoma County in 2017, was one of the state’s deadliest, killing 22 people and destroying more than 5,600 structures.

Direct Relief worked extensively to help the health system in the area rebuild, including cash assistance to the Santa Rosa Community Health Center, which recently completed a rebuild of one of their health sites after the Tubbs Fire destroyed the facility. The health center has received medical supplies during the most recent fires, and local health providers have expressed concern about mental health and post-traumatic stress of residents experiencing a series of fires and disruptions to community life.

In Butte County, site of the 2018 Camp Fire, the state’s most deadly on record, residents are still rebuilding and recovering from that blaze, even while dealing with a new one. The North Complex Fire has killed 15 and more than 2,400 structures have been damaged or destroyed.

Late last week, a Direct Relief shipment departed for the Butte County Public Health Department, via that county’s Emergency Operations Center, Jones said. Ampla Health, which operates a health center in Yuba City, also received a shipment of masks and respiratory medications.

Also in Northern California, Mendocino Community Health Center requested respiratory supplies last week from Direct Relief. A shipment of N95 masks was sent to the center, which is dealing with the effects of the August Complex Fire. The shipment also contained albuterol to address breathing issues, like asthma, that patients may be experiencing. After losing power during previous fires, the organization recently undertook efforts to install back-up power to continue patient care during an emergency.

In San Benito County, Emergency Medical Backpacks were also sent and arrived Monday. The backpacks, which contain first aid-type medical supplies to treat patients outside clinic walls, will equip EMS teams responding to emergency calls throughout the county.

Oregon

Six major fires continue burning in Oregon, and Direct Relief is coordinating closely with the state’s Department of Public Health. Three wildfire kits, which contain medicines and supplies often used to specifically treat wildfire-related health concerns, were shipped to the agency.

Emergency Medical Backpacks were also sent, as well as 100 stethoscopes and 100 blood pressure cuffs. Medical aid to the state has been ongoing, and an airlift of essential medications took place recently for distribution across the state.

Looking ahead

California still has two months to go in its traditional fire season, and with many residents still out of their homes and navigating personal loss, the impacts of this year’s blazes will extend long beyond containment efforts and suppression tactics.

Direct Relief will continue to respond in coordination with responding agencies to meet the needs of those in its home state of California, and throughout the West.

The post Fires Blaze Past Historic Records in California, Prompting Unprecedented Response appeared first on Direct Relief.

However, the deep involvement, generosity, and participation of hundreds of thousands of individuals, and thousands of businesses of all types and nonprofit organizations that have been part of Direct Relief’s activities elevate the importance of public reporting – particularly to those who have so generously provided financial or other support — so they know how, how much, where, and for what purposes those contributions have been used.

Direct Relief’s Response

Direct Relief is funded entirely with private charitable contributions of goods, services, and money and focuses its humanitarian health activities on serving people who are most vulnerable – typically those with the fewest financial resources and least access to essential health care.

The organization’s ongoing efforts involve mobilizing private charitable resources, including essential medications and basic health commodities, and providing them upon request — and free of charge — to an extensive network of locally run partner health organizations that provide services to those most in need.

In emergencies, the approach is the same. Those who are most vulnerable in emergencies are generally the same people who were most vulnerable the day before the emergency occurred.

This has been the case during the unfolding Covid-19 pandemic and why Direct Relief has prioritized the provision of assistance to areas and people where the new threat of Coronavirus made even more severe the existing chronic challenges to obtain needed health services.

With that basic focus, Direct Relief’s Covid-19 response efforts have focused on the following areas:

• Providing personal protective equipment (PPE) to safeguard health workers and essential medications needed to care for those who fall severely ill and require treatment in intensive care units that have been stretched tremendously as cases have surged.
• Boosting emergency financial support to nonprofit safety-net health facilities that have limited to no other access to philanthropic support to keep their staffs safe, enable them to provide Covid-related services such as testing and referrals for the people who rely on them, and also help ensure that they can continue to fulfill the critical front-line role they play in providing access to persons without other options as the existing chronic gaps are likely to grow.
• Generating information products and analyses to guide operations and inform policymakers through extensive collaboration with infectious disease experts, epidemiologists, technology companies, and public agencies.

The First Six Months

PPE and other Essential Material Support

Six months ago, on January 27, Direct Relief dispatched its first shipment of PPE in response to the outbreak to China. A day later, on January 28, a month before the CDC confirmed the first case of community spread in the U.S., Direct Relief deployed thousands of N95 masks, protective gowns and exam gloves to health facilities throughout California and Washington State.

Responding early to the outbreaks afforded Direct Relief unique insights into what medical items would become essential for treatment purposes.

Well before medical supply shortages hit the U.S. and the rest of the world, Direct Relief learned from Chinese physicians and hospital administrators of the precipitous need for PPE, intensive care medication and equipment.

Recognizing that if Covid-19 were to spread globally, it would lead to a tremendous demand for these lifesaving products, Direct Relief worked to get ahead of the pandemic by boosting its inventory of protective gear, including masks and face shields, identifying and sourcing the medicine and medical supplies hospitals would need to treat an influx of patients, and procuring diagnostic and respiratory equipment, such as pulse oximeters, oxygen concentrators, and ventilators.

Six months later, Direct Relief is among the world’s top distributors of protective gear and critical care medication.

By the Numbers

In the past six months, Direct Relief has scaled up its operational activity far beyond any it has engaged in during the past 72 years.

The organization has delivered 17,553 medical aid shipments to 2,591 health facilities in 54 U.S. states and territories and 86 countries.

These shipments have contained 2,800,000 lbs. (1,400 tons) of medical essentials, including 76,858,730 Defined Daily Doses of medications, with a value of $636,815,730 (wholesale acquisition cost).

Emergency Financial Assistance to Safety-Net Health Facilities

Complementing the extensive quantities of PPE and other essential health products deployed to the front lines of the Covid-19 pandemic, Direct Relief has issued $30 million+ in grants to 523 community health centers, free & charitable clinics, and other non-profit health providers serving people and places across the U.S. at disproportionate risk from the effects of the virus.

For the past 16 years, Direct Relief has worked in close partnership with and in a supporting role for the vast network of nonprofit community health centers and free and charitable clinics in the U.S.

More than 30 million of the country’s most vulnerable residents — 65 percent of whom are members of ethnic and racial minority groups — rely on these local nonprofit providers for health care. On a daily basis, Direct Relief provides charitable donations of prescription medications and medical essentials to these facilities in all 50 states and U.S. territories for patients who need but cannot afford the items and lack other options.

Direct Relief developed the emergency grant program that has now provided over $30 million following the early signals that Covid-19 was having disproportionate effects among persons with low incomes and in communities of color – the same people for whom these safety-net facilities devote their efforts.

The spontaneous, extraordinary outpouring of public support that Direct Relief received that made it possible for Direct Relief, in turn, to direct emergency funds to these frontline facilities  struggling to keep their staffs safe while maintaining ongoing essential services and also step up public health measures, such as taking on community-based Covid testing.

These frontline community-based providers are using the funding to sustain and expand their activities and services, which include the protection and safety of health workers; telehealth services; Covid-19 screening and testing; and ensuring healthcare access for homeless and elderly populations and patients with chronic health conditions.

According to the National Association of Community Health Centers, this is the largest-ever philanthropic infusion of financial support to U.S. community health centers.

By the Numbers

Analytical Support

In February, when the rapid spread of Covid infections led to immediate crisis-level shortages of PPE and crisis planning to address the severe concerns about the availability of ventilators, Direct Relief began developing an estimating tool for the volumes of medications likely to be needed for the supportive care of Covid-19 patients while in intensive care units.

This tool, which incorporated broad input from clinicians and pharmaceutical companies, was then used to develop, in close consultation with the Society of Critical Care Medicine, a pre-pack kit of ICU medications that could be (and has been) deployed rapidly to areas immediately hit with a surge in ICU patients.

Each kit contains medications to treat 100 patients during an ICU stay.

Extensive product contributions from the manufacturers of the items needed for the kit allowed for more than 500 to be produced and distributed – enough to cover supportive care for 50,000 severely ill patients hospitalized and in intensive care.

In addition, extensive analyses have been conducted to inform policymakers and public health agencies with implementing and modifying social distancing measures, as well as guide its own activities, Direct Relief helped assemble the Covid-19 Mobility Data Network, a global collaboration of infectious disease epidemiologists and technology companies to share insights derived from population movement dynamics — the results of which are documented in numerous pre-print and peer-reviewed studies on mobility data and infectious disease modeling.

Articles and Resources:

• Aggregated Mobility Data Could Help Fight COVID-19. Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Apr. 10, 2020
• Case Study: Using Facebook Data to Monitor Adherence to Stay-at-home Orders in Colorado and Utah. MedRxiv, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, June 9, 2020
• Camber Systems Social Distancing Reporter: A tool for public-health researchers to assist the public and policymakers understand how populations are engaging in social distancing over time.
• The Facebook Data for Good Mobility Dashboard: This map is based on insights developed by the COVID-19 Mobility Data Network, coordinated by Direct Relief and researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, using aggregated population movement data from Facebook’s Data for Good program.
  

Financial Support and Use of Funds

Direct Relief recognizes that the generous supporters who made financial contributions to Direct Relief in response to the Covid-19 pandemic did so for the clear purpose of assisting health workers responding to and people affected by the pandemic.

In accepting funds for Covid-19 relief efforts, Direct Relief understands that both those who contributed, and people affected by the virus for whose benefit the contributions were made, deserve to know, in detail, how Direct Relief is using these funds.

As of June 30, Direct Relief had received over 125,000 financial contributions totaling $104 million for its Coronavirus response.

Direct Relief does not rely on any funding from government grants, and 100 percent of contributions received for Covid-19 are restricted for the exclusive use of responding to the pandemic.

Of the $104 million Covid-19 contributions received, more than half included an additional geographic or thematic designation indicating where the contributors intended their support to be used.

Of the funds received with a geographic restriction, 84% were intended for use in the U.S. only.

Expenditures

Over the past six months, Direct Relief has spent $72.9 million on response efforts — nearly 70 percent of the $104 million in contributions it received — across the following regions:

The $72.9 million in funds were used to support relief activities across the following functional areas:

• $34,280,827 to support organizations and health facilities in the form of financial cash grants.
• $30,361,738 to purchase urgently needed personal protective gear including millions of masks, face shields, gloves and gowns, and specialized medical equipment and supplies including oxygen concentrators, ventilators, and pulse oximeters that were requested by medical personnel throughout the U.S. and worldwide.
• $6,836,502 to mobilize, warehouse, transport and deliver to health facilities more than 2,800,000 lbs. (1,400 tons) of medical essentials via 17,553 deliveries.
• $1,458,410 to coordinate and manage response activities across all U.S. states and territories and more than 80 countries.
• $0.00 of Covid-19 donations were spent on fundraising or marketing activities.

Procurement

Direct Relief’s assistance model typically involves receiving requested product donations of Rx medications, vaccines, and medical supplies directly from manufacturers, which are in turn provided without charge to partner nonprofit health organizations that serve vulnerable people. When finances permit, Direct Relief also purchases specific such items that are needed by partner organizations but not available from manufacturers.

Direct Relief also maintains emergency stocks of PPE and essential prescription medications and supplies to be able to respond rapidly to emergencies. These stocks include products that are donated by manufacturers but also include purchased items. Among the items Direct Relief has routinely purchased in recent years are NIOSH-approved N95 respirators, which Direct Relief has manufactured in China and bear their own NIOSH approval and registrations (as well as distinctive in color and marked “Not for Resale.”) This step was prompted by the series of historic wildfires that California has experienced in recent years and the recurring situation of N95 shortages and rapid escalation in prices when the fires occurred. When Covid-19 broke out, Direct Relief fortunately had significant stocks of Direct Relief N095 respirators and other PPE, much of it donated by manufacturers such as 3M, that enabled an immediate response.

The expenditure of $30 million to purchase Covid-related materials over the past six months is the most expansive Direct Relief has ever done. The specific items purchased were based on the urgent requests received from partner health organizations, and extreme care was taken to obtain only products that had appropriate certifications and approvals for use in the U.S. (such as from NIOSH and/or FDA) and at a reasonable price – which was a challenge given the global shortages and wild price fluctuations.

In total, the expenditure of $30 million in procuring essentials met those standards. The specific items purchased include over 77 million units of PPE and several thousand other durable medical commodities, including oxygen concentrators, oximeters, ventilators, and “no touch” infrared thermometers. Distribution of these essential items continues on a daily basis, and the quantities of each item purchased are listed below:

The post Covid-19 Pandemic: Six Months into the Response appeared first on Direct Relief.

To address the rising case count, Direct Relief is donating 1 million surgical masks from the U.S. to 155 public health care facilities across Mexico.

The donation adds to the more than 330,000 masks, 10,000 goggles, 40,000 faceshields, 489,000 gloves, and 48,000 gowns and coveralls delivered already by Direct Relief to Mexican hospitals and nonprofits responding to Covid-19.

Not included in this total are 100,000 KN95 masks donated to Mexican NGO Fundacion IMSS by two-time Academy Award-winning film director Alfonso Cuarón, which Direct Relief helped import.

Direct Relief, which has operated as registered national NGO in Mexico since 2014, has supported Mexico’s response to Covid-19 since the pandemic began, coordinating with a range of public agencies and businesses.

The Mexican Social Security Institute, the National Nutrition Institute, the Mexican Consulate in California, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have collected and relayed medical supply needs while several Mexico-based medical manufacturers have committed in-kind donations to Direct Relief of medical resources. PricewaterhouseCoopers has worked to identify additional PPE vendors and helped developed a distribution plan that aligns supply with demand

Along with PPE, Direct Relief received Bepanthen (skin cream) from Bayer to be distributed to frontline health workers experiencing skin irritation from PPE. Johnson & Johnson also contributed nonprescription medications and supplies, and The Coca Cola Foundation supported Direct Relief’s response with a $791,000 grant, which was used to purchase PPE.

Additional reporting contributed by Eduardo Mendoza.

The post Mexico Hits Highest Covid-19 Positive Test Rate As 1 Million Masks Arrive From Direct Relief appeared first on Direct Relief.

Wildfires occur every summer in Australia (typically peaking in February), but the scale of these seasonal fires were unprecedented. A severe drought, which led into the hottest and driest year on record, combined with sustained high temperatures and windy conditions, created an exceedingly dangerous fire situation across many areas of the country. Hard-hit areas included New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, and South Australia.

Beyond the threat from high temperatures and burn-related injuries, wildfires can exacerbate chronic health issues such as asthma, bronchitis and other respiratory problems. For those with such conditions, fires deal a harsh combination of smoke, ash, dust, and other particulates in the air. Smoke from the wildfires inundated southern Australia – in December, the smoke in Sydney was recorded at 11 times over the hazardous limit – and was reported to have reached New Zealand. Hospital admissions dramatically increased in the smoke-affected areas, with some patients suffering from asthma for the first time in their lives. People were encouraged to stay inside and advised to wear masks to filter out unhealthy particulates when outside.

Direct Relief’s Response

Australia, an industrialized country with a universal healthcare system, had an adequate in-country supply of the medical goods needed to care for people affected by the fires at local hospitals and clinics. As a result, requests for emergency assistance with health-related products mainly focused on protective equipment, particularly N95 masks needed to support frontline workers and communities being inundated with smoke. A need for first aid and basic diagnostic products for use in conducting outreach services was also identified.

Neighbors Helping Neighbors in Fire-Ravaged New South Wales

Direct Relief delivered eight emergency medical shipments in response to the fires, all of which were transported on a charitable basis by Qantas Airlines. These shipments went to the Australian Red Cross, Rotary Club Melbourne, Victoria State Emergency Services, Convoy of Hope Australia, Team Rubicon Australia, and Qantas Airways.

A total of 430,000 N95 respirator masks were provided in the emergency shipments. The masks were then distributed by partner facilities and organizations to:

• National and state health authorities
• State emergency management agencies
• First responders including fire fighters, police, and ambulance crews
• Healthcare facilities and providers
• Schools and community groups

In addition to protecting people from heavy smoke during the fires, the masks were also used to protect public health workers and residents when returning to affected communities after the fires were extinguished. People were not only at risk of injury by falling branches and from sharp or smoldering objects hidden in rubble, but asbestos, fire-damaged septic systems, and chemically treated wood were identified for having negative respiratory health impacts.

Asbestos, Heavy Metals, Lead. Long After a Wildfire, Toxic Substances Linger.

After the fires were contained, a number of the N95 masks were provided to the Department of Health and Human Services, midwifery clinics located across the country, and first responders fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

Also included in the relief shipments were 12 Direct Relief Emergency Medical Packs. These portable ruggedized backpacks are filled with medical products to help address community health needs in an emergency. Each pack contains supplies and equipment designed to meet a variety of prevalent disaster-related medical issues, including infection control, diagnostics, trauma care, and personal protection.

Two of the backpacks were sent to the Australian Red Cross and 10 went to Team Rubicon Australia for use when conducting medical outreach services in remote and hard-to-reach areas. Outreach services were conducted in New South Wales and on Kangaroo Island – known for its incredible biodiversity and wildlife sanctuaries – where fires scorched over 800 square miles.

Financial Assistance through Grant Awards

Due to the fight against COVID-19, Direct Relief’s awarding of cash grants to assist with wildfire recovery efforts has been delayed. However, with COVID-19 cases decreasing in Australia, Direct Relief is planning to move forward with a number of cash grant awards.

For One Australian School, Repairing Classrooms Came First. Then Mental Health.

The financial assistance will be mainly focused on psychosocial support, particularly targeting youth and pre-school kids who have experienced, or are at-risk of experiencing, emotional distress related to the wildfires. Broader community health projects will also be considered for recovery grants.

The post Six Months After Australia’s Wildfires, Recovery Continues appeared first on Direct Relief.

As countries in Latin America, Africa and South Asia became the latest hotspots of the Covid-19 pandemic, Direct Relief has accelerated its response in these regions, beginning with shipments of enough Covid-related emergency medicine and medical supplies to treat more than 50,000 intensive-care patients in developing countries around the globe.

Shortly after it began its Covid-19 response in January, Direct Relief began identifying and procuring medicines that would be needed by intensive care units treating Covid-19 patients. Working with critical care specialists and healthcare companies, Direct Relief developed ICU Critical Supply Modules that could be prepackaged, stockpiled and rapidly deployed in the event of drug scarcity. The international version of the ICU Modules contains medications and supplies selected to treat up to 500 ICU patients.

Direct Relief has begun dispatching 115 ICU Modules to 32 partners in 27 countries across Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Southeastern Europe. They are being sent with stocks of personal protective equipment and oxygen concentrators, and some partners have requested and are receiving donated ventilators.

Direct Relief’s largest international shipment to date of Covid-19 relief supplies arrived in Ecuador on June 4. Responding to a request from the Government of Ecuador, Direct Relief shipped seven ICU Critical Supply Modules and 90 portable oxygen concentrators, plus basic supplies and medicines for both Covid-19 and general medical care. In all, it shipped 26 pallets of essential medicines and supplies weighing 8.8 tons.

Direct Relief has also so far delivered 164 domestic ICU Modules to hospitals in the United States, each containing supplies designed to treat up to 100 hospitalized patients. Hospitals treating severely ill ICU patients—including those on ventilators—need medication for sedation and to address some of the secondary complications that may arise, including bacterial pneumonia and septic shock. The ICU Critical Supply Modules include antibiotics such as azithromycin and ceftriaxone, vasopressors such as norepinephrine, and respiratory medications like albuterol inhalers.

How Recipients Were Selected

Because the needs of Direct Relief’s partner network far exceed the available resources, Direct Relief carefully selected recipients based on a series of criteria including Covid-19 patient numbers, ICU capacity, status of the proposed recipient hospital as a nationally recognized center of Covid-19 treatment, logistical ability to clear customs and receive the shipments, and direct requests from national Ministries of Health.

The information was cross-checked with national vulnerability data based on Direct Relief’s new Covid-19 International Vulnerability Index Map. The index assigns vulnerability scores to countries based on indicators including co-morbidities, number of hospital beds, population over 60, food insecurity and Covid-19 case counts.

In South America, ICU Module recipients include Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru. In the Caribbean and Central America, ICU Modules are being sent to Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica and St. Lucia. In EMEA, recipients include Armenia, Ghana, Italy, Kosovo, Lesotho, Liberia, Macedonia, Malawi, Palestine, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Yemen and Zimbabwe. In Asia, Dhulikhel Hospital in Nepal is receiving two ICU Modules.

The ICU Modules are only one part of Direct Relief’s Covid-19 response outside the U.S. Direct Relief has provided grant funding to treat Covid-19 among Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, to help build dedicated Covid-19 isolation and treatment wards in Haiti and the Philippines, to purchase PPE in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and India, and—via a $50,000 emergency grant to the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States—to increase Covid-19 testing capacity in Saint Lucia, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda. The organization has also provided ventilators and other critical medical items to several countries.

Latin America Response

Direct Relief has a key strategic partnership with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the division of the World Health Organization overseeing 35 countries in the Americas. Direct Relief has arranged a charter flight carrying $7 million in PPE purchased by PAHO to be delivered to many of its member states across the Americas. The charter is currently scheduled to arrive in Panama this week.

Supported in part by generous financial and material donations from Coca-Cola Foundation, Bayer Mexico, Johnson & Johnson, 3M and AstraZeneca, Direct Relief donations to Mexican health partners include 350,000 surgical masks for hospitals, 10,000 goggles and 30,000 face shields.

Another large shipment containing PPE, Emergency Medical Backpacks, general medicines and other supplies was delivered to the Ministry of Health of Bolivia, which is facing multiple health emergencies including Covid-19 and a dengue outbreak. Additional Covid-19 preparedness donations containing Emergency Medical Backpacks and PPE have been sent to PAHO member states including Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Paraguay.

Since Direct Relief’s first Covid-19 response shipment on Jan. 24, 2020, the organization has sent $23 million in medical aid to South America via 26 deliveries. Internationally excluding the United States, Direct Relief has distributed 1.4 million masks, 1.3 million gloves and more than 500,000 other PPE supplies.

The post Direct Relief Expands Medical Aid to More Than Two Dozen Countries Fighting Covid-19 appeared first on Direct Relief.

“We’re at that junction now where lots of areas are being affected, so [Direct Relief’s] strategy is flexible and adapting,” said Leighton Jones, Direct Relief’s director of emergency response, who is heading the organization’s response in the United States.

After Covid-19 was first reported in Wuhan, China, late last year, Direct Relief focused on providing personal protective equipment and other supplies to Hubei province (where Wuhan is located) and the surrounding areas.

But by the time the Chinese government quarantined the city of Wuhan, an estimated 5 million people had left the city. “We had an idea of what might be coming our way,” said Alycia Clark, a Direct Relief pharmacist.

For that reason, the organization began increasing supplies to United States health care providers as well, bolstering medication and supplies for its vast network of health centers and free clinics.

In the meantime, the world’s supply of masks, gowns, gloves, and other personal protective equipment (commonly called PPE) was dwindling.

Protecting health workers

“Before Covid broke out, we had a fairly sizable inventory of PPE in our warehouse,” Jones said. Now, “as with anybody, our inventory is challenged because of the supply challenges.”

And Covid-19 was starting to appear in the United States by February, as far afield as Seattle, southern California, and New York City.

At first, Direct Relief focused on areas that were seeing significant numbers of confirmed cases, providing PPE and other supplies to Washington, New York, California, and Massachusetts.

But as the coronavirus has gained ground in all 50 states, more widespread help was needed.

On March 18, Direct Relief announced that it had begun sending 250,000 masks and other protective gear to about 1,000 facilities – a shipment designed to help them keep on screening patients and providing much-needed primary care, which is frequently disrupted during a crisis.

Since then, the organization has continued to provide protective gear and other supplies to both hospitals and safety net providers.

Direct Relief is also providing tents to help health care organizations triage patients more safely in the open air.

Even during this outbreak, health centers, clinics, and other care providers are keeping their doors open, providing on-the-phone advice to patients, assessing potential cases, and monitoring the chronic conditions and mental health concerns that, left unchecked, can cause health crises of their own.

While Direct Relief has added hospitals to its list of recipients, “we’re still continuing to assist [health centers] and free clinics, because they are still at the front lines of seeing their communities. They also know their communities better than everyone else,” Jones explained.

Anticipating Need

But even as the organization works to meet existing scarcities, it’s trying to get ahead of the curve.

The world is currently focused on the crisis caused by a lack of personal protective equipment – which is reportedly placing some health care providers in unsafe positions and even jeopardizing the ability of some safety net providers to keep their doors open.

But Clark thinks that, as severe cases begin to build up in hospitals, lifesaving emergency-room medicines will become harder and harder to keep in stock.

Health care organizations haven’t yet run into shortages of IV fluids, broad-spectrum antibiotics, or vasopressors, which help to increase the blood pressure of severely ill patients, she explained.

“Everybody’s still scrambling for PPE…and they haven’t thought too much about the medications,” Clark said. “I think that that’s the next risk, that those things are going to be highly coveted and they’re going to run out.”

Right now, no vaccine and no specialized treatment are available for Covid-19. Clark explained that hospitals can only provide supportive care and treat some of the potential complications of the disease, which include bacterial infections and even sepsis.

So Direct Relief is working with its partner network acquire some of the medications that the organization’s team thinks are most likely to be in short supply, using a specially-created calculator to anticipate how much of individual medications will be required.

“We’re trying to think ahead to what we can do that could possibly be helpful,” Clark said.

The Covid-19 outbreak is also predicted to create a widespread shortage of hospital beds. To help keep some patients out of hospitals – and make it possible for recovering patients to return home more quickly – Direct Relief has acquired more than 2,000 oxygen concentrators to distribute.

These compact units increase the amount of oxygen a patient can take in, helping them breathe more easily without the need for hospital equipment. “Patients that are doing better but just need a little bit of oxygen…it gets them out of the hospital faster,” said Clark.

Preventing chronic-care crises

But Covid-19 won’t just affect the people infected with it. The infection also threatens to disrupt primary care and other programs, which could have catastrophic consequences for people dealing with health conditions as different as diabetes and substance abuse.

An unmanaged health condition can quickly spiral into a crisis, threatening individual patients’ lives – and putting further strain on overburdened emergency rooms.

While recommendations that people stockpile several weeks’ worth of medications led to shortages at some pharmacies, “we were concerned that the most vulnerable may not have that ability,” said Damon Taugher, Direct Relief’s vice president of global programs.

To keep up with increased needs, “we began to look more expansively, and to accept more than we may otherwise have done, hedging against potential stockouts,” Taugher said.

Direct Relief operates a long-term replenishment program that makes it possible for vulnerable patients to more easily obtain vital medications from their health center or pharmacy.

With the crisis in mind, Direct Relief worked with the manufacturers involved in the program to revise the guidelines and allow patients to receive 60- or 90-day supplies of chronic-care medications.

Traditionally, patients who receive care through a health center or clinic have gone to their local facility to receive medications and consultations. During the Covid-19 pandemic, health care providers “are trying to shift the model,” Taugher explained, offering curbside delivery or even at-home visits to patients sheltering in place.

Making sense of social distancing

But the world needs more than medication, supplies, and even a vaccine to beat Covid-19, said Andrew Schroeder, Direct Relief’s vice president of research and analysis.

“The most salient issue outside of that is social distancing, and it is the one that is having the largest impact on the country and the world,” Schroeder said. “If [people] don’t do this, all the medical supplies in the world aren’t going to make a difference.

But social distancing has never been practiced on such a large scale, Schroeder explained. It’s hard to know whether people will follow the rules, what the effects will be, and whether it will be enough. And little is known about human behavior during large-scale social distancing, which makes it difficult to make other predictions.

That’s where Direct Relief’s research and analysis team – which frequently uses anonymized data to track population movements – can help. “This is a problem that’s the same kind of thing as what we’ve been doing [to track] evacuations and such. It’s just sort of in reverse: It’s not about movement, it’s about stasis,” said Schroeder.

Direct Relief’s research and analysis team is offering consultation and guidance on accessing anonymized data to help guide official actions and policy.

“This is not a one-angle problem,” Schroeder said, explaining that medical goods, a future vaccine, and social distancing all have vital roles to play in stopping the disease’s spread.

The post How Does an NGO Respond to a Pandemic? An Inside Look appeared first on Direct Relief.

Hospital doctors, exposed to potential patients, are self-quarantining. So are a number of emergency room nurses, said one specialist at a Washington hospital, who asked to remain anonymous.

The University of Washington Medical Center has instituted a drive-through clinic to test any of its employees who are concerned they may have the coronavirus.

Nurses in Washington have expressed concern about a lack of available N95 masks, The New York Times reported.

At one point, pharmacies in Seattle were even running out of prescriptions because so many people were stockpiling medication, said Bert Green, a retired physician who was in self-quarantine after coming into contact with a family friend later found to have the disease.

But even as the coronavirus gains ground – and despite the fact that health workers are at particularly high risk of contracting it – primary and specialty care providers in Seattle and the surrounding areas are quietly going about their jobs.

They’re triaging potential coronavirus cases, working to keep their patients out of strained emergency rooms. They’re continuing to perform procedures and manage chronic conditions. And in some cases, they’re experimenting with open-air clinics and new appointment systems to try to keep their patients safer.

Closing gaps

About half of the patients at the Olympia Free Clinic, located about an hour and a half’s drive south of Seattle, don’t have homes.

The clinic, located in an old building that also provides housing and hygiene services, saw most of their patients during the day, to avoid conflicts with meal services and shelters.

But then coronavirus appeared in Thurston County. Dr. Mike Matlock, the clinic’s medical director, said they were concerned about having so many people – about 200 per day – congregating in the building. The clinic began seeing patients only at night, and only by appointment, in an attempt to minimize patient contact.

“It does diminish access a bit for patients we may be serving as a safety net for,” Dr. Matlock said. But safety was paramount.

Olympia Free Clinic also relies on a staff of volunteers, many of them older adults. They asked a number of them to stay home to avoid exposure. Not everyone went willingly.

Or at all. “I’m over 70 myself, so I have to think about whether I should be seeing patients,” Dr. Matlock said.

But for the patients who come in urgently seeking care – whether it’s for an injury or a chronic condition – “we want to make sure we don’t leave any gaps in care,” Dr. Matlock said.

“Chronic illnesses don’t stop for a crisis”

For Winnie Lee, a physician assistant at International Community Health Services (ICHS) in Seattle, it’s about continuity, too. “People’s chronic illnesses don’t stop for a crisis. They still have high blood pressure. They still have diabetes,” she said.

That’s not least because, she explained, people with some chronic health conditions may suffer complications from Covid-19.

And she feels like her work triaging patients is helping to keep the city’s strained health system under control. “If we’re not here, everyone goes to the ER,” she said. “They need to reserve their supplies and their workers for the people who need it most.”

Still, as Lee goes without her work, it’s not entirely without concern. “We’re wondering if we’re going to have a lot of protection for ourselves. You look at the supplies and you do worry, you do wonder.”

When it came to protective gear like masks, “we were really down to like one day,” said Rachel Koh, ICHS’s chief operating officer. Direct Relief provided the health center with a shipment of N95 and surgical masks, gowns, and other supplies. Without it, “we wouldn’t know how to continue to operate some of our programs.”

Even with the boost in supplies, “it’s challenging,” Koh said. “Especially when the first death was announced, and we found out that a patient of ours was also subsequently a confirmed case…you can imagine the staff anxiety.”

“An older dog”

Even when there are enough supplies to go around and protocols are followed, it’s not a fail-safe, said the specialist at the Washington hospital who requested anonymity. “Some nurses did use those precautions and they still did get infected” at the hospital where they work.

The specialist is still at work. “I’m an older dog. I’ve been through a lot. Of course I’m concerned, but I have not closed my practice,” they said. “It’s not going to change anything I’m doing right now.”

Still, it hasn’t been possible to do every procedure. One patient with Covid-19 urgently needed a procedure done in the specialist’s hospital, but “my nurses were very apprehensive and very concerned about the lack of guidelines,” they said.

“They felt that if it was not an absolute emergency, we should use some other way.”

The providers interviewed for this article all expressed a sense of obligation – to preserve continuity of care, to fulfill their mission of caring for vulnerable patients, to work through the personal risk.

But, as the specialist acknowledged, the end is not yet in sight.

“There’s a sense of panic right now at the hospital, because we’re preparing for more and more coronavirus,” they said.

The post Through Washington’s Covid-19 Crisis, Health Providers are Quietly at Work appeared first on Direct Relief.

But the health care organizations providing primary care to low-income patients – even as the outbreak gains ground – haven’t claimed a fair share of the public attention. Like hospitals, these organizations are fighting on the ground level – screening patients, dispensing advice, and working hard to keep patients out of the emergency room.

They’re also treating a high percentage of uninsured patients on scant operating budgets. In some cases, staff are partly or mostly composed of volunteers. Some focus on particularly high-risk patient populations, including people experiencing homelessness or with HIV.

And right now, they’re facing worrying shortages of personal protective equipment like masks and gloves, while confronting the real possibility that their patient numbers will surge, their volunteers will stop coming, or that they may even need to temporarily shut their doors.

Direct Relief surveyed 612 safety net providers in 47 states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands to learn more about their concerns, plans, and needs. Here’s what they said.

The Data

Asked about the possibility of COVID-19 to significantly impact patients, disrupt daily operations, or create a difficult-to-manage surge of patients, a significant majority of the organizations surveyed said that they were “very concerned” or “moderately concerned.”

Only 42.5% of responders had an emergency response plan that was specifically tailored to epidemics. (37.3% said their plans were still in development.) And only 24.3% had completed a response plan specific to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Widely-reported shortages of masks, gloves, and other personal protective equipment (often called PPE within the health care industry), are affecting primary health facilities as well. Only 28.4% of respondents said they had a reliable vendor to supply them with protective gear over the next 1-2 months.

“Right now, the primary urgent and all-consuming need is PPE – the N95 mask shortage is acute community wide and without them, we are worried about our overall operations,” a representative from one facility wrote.

“We are literally running out of protective gear,” another organization reported.

Perhaps most crucially, only 35.9% of respondents were certain that their doors would stay open. The rest either said that a closure of operations was a possibility or that they were “uncertain.”

Why It Matters

A shortage of protective gear is dangerous – and not just for patients. It’s actually health care workers – who rely on those layers of masks, gloves, and gowns every time they encounter a high-risk patient – who are most at risk.

And staff members who can’t rely on a steady supply of protective gear may be (understandably) less willing to continue to aid in coronavirus efforts.

“Since everyone is coming on a volunteer basis, people could choose not to come anymore if we lack adequate supplies to protect our staff,” wrote a representative from one facility.

In addition, many volunteers are older adults, who are significantly more likely to become dangerously sick from COVID-19. Some health care facilities expressed concern about exposing older volunteers to potentially sick patients.

Even beyond the risk to staff, it’s conceivable that health care organizations could become part of the problem, not the solution.

“If we are unable to protect those in the building (patients, staff, volunteers) from contamination when they enter, we would become a way to spread disease,” another provider reported. “At that point, it may be in the best interest of the community to close our doors temporarily.”

If Doors Close

Safety net providers shutting their doors isn’t just a shame. It’s a potential contribution to a growing public health crisis.

Typically, these organizations have close ties to the community and have worked over long periods to gain the trust of vulnerable populations. That includes providing care that’s sensitive to patients’ preferred languages and customs, along with maintaining a strong community presence.

Losing those resources in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic would place more pressure on overcrowded emergency rooms and public health officials. Some patients might even be more hesitant to seek care.

But another, more hidden crisis threatens.

Should their doors close, one facility reported, “this would leave our diabetic and hypertensive patients without access to vital care and medications.”

Chronic health conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, asthma, and cardiovascular disease are frequently manageable with high-quality care – medication management, supervised lifestyle changes, and even addressing underlying mental health concerns are all often part of the process.

Unmanaged, however, “chronic conditions become crises. Crises put more pressure on overburdened emergency rooms,” said Direct Relief President and CEO Thomas Tighe.

The coronavirus pandemic threatens to create a “concurrent situation where demand for health services go up at the same time as the capacity of the health system contracts.”

What the Data Can’t Capture

Significant numbers of safety net patients have circumstances that put them at particular risk. People with HIV live with compromised immune systems. So do people experiencing homelessness, who frequently sleep in rough conditions and have less access to good nutrition.

Health care organizations are well aware of the risk. “We serve a large homeless population and have concerns if the outbreak were to spread through the encampments,” wrote one facility. “We serve patients in the encampments and want to ensure appropriate [protective gear] especially for those staff.”

For low-income patients, the costs of a pandemic – from losing work to stockpiling supplies to increased medical needs – are a serious concern. “We have a large number of patients with multiple serious health issues as well as food insecurity and lack of work,” another organization reported.

The post Volunteers, Homelessness, Supply Shortages: Nonprofit Health Providers Confront the Coronavirus Pandemic appeared first on Direct Relief.

“Anxiety is making a lot of patients with simple upper respiratory tract infections, who would usually take care of themselves,” seek medical care, said Dr. Armen Arshakyan, the clinic’s chief medical officer.

Where a clinic location might normally see three or four walk-in patients with respiratory infections in a day, now it might be as many as eight or 10, Dr. Arshakyan said.

It’s not just Saban.

“People…panic when they get the flu,” said Izabella Sahakian, chief operations officer at AGHABY Comprehensive Community Health Center, also in Los Angeles County. “They can’t tell: Do they have the flu, do they have the virus?”

Sahakian estimates that her walk-ins have increased by more than 50%.

For health centers and clinics offering primary care in counties with cases of the novel coronavirus, the disease – and the fear and anxiety it’s caused – has brought complications.

Supplies of masks and other personal protective equipment have dwindled. Staff members carry out screening measures – both in exam rooms and over the phone – to assess a patient’s potential risk.

Patients who come in with respiratory infections and a history of recent travel to China require consultation with public health officials – and in some cases, immediate transportation to a hospital. Even some staff members are apprehensive about staying at work.

After Chinese New Year, it’s “kind of a taboo to go to the doctor’s,” said Dr. Kenneth Tai. Dr. Tai is chief medical officer at North East Medical Services, or NEMS, which serves primarily patients of Chinese descent in the Bay Area – including both San Francisco and Santa Clara Counties, which have confirmed coronavirus cases.

But even so, clinic attendance is unusually low. “People are not as willing to come to the clinics, just because they know they don’t want to come to a public place,” Dr. Tai said.

The exception? Patients with flu symptoms. “Besides the fever and cold symptoms, they may either have travel history to China or specifically to Hubei province, or they [may have had] close personal contact to someone with coronavirus exceptions,” he explained.

Patients who have symptoms and a history of travel to China are quickly isolated and the local public health department alerted, Dr. Tai said. The health center asked some staff members, recently returned from China, to self-quarantine for 14 days.

Thus far, no one at NEMS has had a positive result for the coronavirus.

But that doesn’t stop patients – or staff, for that matter – from being anxious.

“There are still a lot of uncertainties and potential fears and panic,” Dr. Tai said. “Really, the risk of getting this infection is really, really low, but there’s so much press around it.”

Patients aren’t just anxious for themselves, Dr. Tai said. Many also have family in China, where masks are in short supply. “In the beginning when we were just putting the masks out in the waiting room or the exam room…we just ran out of masks for people,” he recalled.

Sahakian reported a similar urgency around masks. “We’ve had some patients say ‘I have family in China and I haven’t been able to purchase masks anywhere,’” she said.

As part of its coronavirus response, Direct Relief has supplied masks – along with exam gloves and isolation gowns – to a number of health care organizations in the United States, including NEMS and AGHABY.

The coronavirus appears to have inspired a rush on another medical commodity: flu vaccines.

At St. John’s Well Child and Family Center in Los Angeles County, flu vaccines are generally given between October and early January, said Sam Badianat, the health center’s pharmacy director. “Typically it drops off quite a bit because people are either vaccinated or they refuse to get a vaccine,” he explained.

This year, though, St. John’s has seen what he called a “huge influx” beginning in late January.

In some cases, Badianat said, people seem to think that the flu vaccine may offer them some protection against coronavirus – a misconception that health providers will correct.

But many are simply doing what they can to care for their health. The coronavirus “puts their health at risk,” Badianat said. “I think, in a bigger picture, they’re trying to be more healthy with whatever we can provide to them.”

Dr. Tai agreed. “People are definitely more amenable to getting the flu shot,” he said. “They feel a little bit better.”

The post Coronavirus Fears Drive More Patients to California Health Centers appeared first on Direct Relief.

States of Emergency have been declared in New South Wales, Victoria,  and the Australian Capital Territory. Mass evacuations have been taking place when conditions allow.

About 5 million people have been affected by the fires. Hundreds of thousands are now displaced or have lost their homes.

Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne are blanketed in thick and hazardous smoke.

Check this page for ongoing updates as data becomes available, including from Direct Relief correspondents in Australia and at its California headquarters, as well as from its researcher team, who created the Factal.com-powered GIS map above. 

January 29- Air quality is at “moderate” or better throughout Australia, with the exception of Orbost, in Victoria, which is rated “unhealthy” by The World Air Quality Project.

However, high temperatures throughout Victoria and NSW, exceeding 100°F have kept firefighters on alert— including Moyhu (Victoria) Fire Birgade Chief Alan Sampson, who spoke with Direct Relief for an upcoming story, on high alert for new fires.

http://aqicn.org/map/australia/

January 28- A dispatch from Amarica Rafanelli, in New South Wales, after visiting the NSW Lifesaving Club:

“NSW Surf Lifesaving Club emphasized the need to protect their 70,000 lifeguards as fires continue to burn throughout the state. They expressed concerns about worsening conditions with the official “start” of fire season in February. They say smoky conditions have prevented lifeguards from seeing the ocean, making it difficult if not impossible for them to do their job during these extreme smoke events.”

January 27- Chris Alleway, of the Emergency Response Team, was able to source maps showing the extend of the fires’ destruction.

“This red circle is Sydney and the dark green is the Gospers Mountain Fire. 1 million hectares (2.6 million acres). 1380 kms just to drive around.”

“This fire itself is larger than the size of 33 countries. Wanted to share just to show this is the scale of what the fires have consumed. For perspective the total of lands burned is 6x this at more than 6 million hectares.”

January 26- Amarica Rafanelli caught up with Armene Zedmoda, who was visiting Lake Conjola for Australia Day with her kids:

“I think no one ever thought there was a need to wear masks until now. I haven’t felt the need to put it (mask) on, since I mostly work inside,” Zemoda said.

“It’s only been bad today. I don’t there have been any reports that suggest for a day or two it will go anything major. I’d be more worried about that coronoavirus, like germs, than smoke,” she said.

January 25- Amarica Rafanelli, with a dispatch:

“Fires are still burning in Canberra and lower parts of NSW. Air quality remains poor in those areas. Fires have calmed down in Victoria. This weekend, the air was heavy with smoke in Lake Conjola (NSW). Residents said it was “a good day” compared to what it has been. In Picton, a town about one hour south of Sydney, the air smelled of smoke but skies were clear. In Sydney, air quality shifts regularly as new fires pick up and winds change.”

January 24- Amarica Rafanelli with a photo (below) from Lake Conjola, which has the worst air quality in Australia today, according to The World Air Quality Project.

The air quality has been rated “very unhealthy,” which is the second most hazardous rating.

Chris Alleway reports that folks in the area are, “out and about, biking and walking” without masks.

***

The names of three Americans who died in a plane crash while fighting bushfires in Australia earlier this week have been released: Capt. Ian McBeth, 44, of Great Falls, Montana, First Officer Paul Clyde Hudson, 42, of Buckeye, Arizona, and Flight Engineer Rick DeMorgan Jr., 43, who was based in Navarre, Florida.

All three men were U.S. military veterans, and two were fathers. All leave behind bereaved wives.

McBeth, Hudson, and DeMorgan were working Coulson Aviation, which is based in Canada. They were killed when their C-130 plane crashed near Richmond, New South Wales on January 22.

January 23- A couple photos of the wildfires from NASA– one from Astronaut Christina Koch in the International Space Station, and one from

January 22- From Chris Alleway, of Direct Relief’s Emergency Response Team:

“Extremely smoky here in Sydney today (January 23 in Australia). Rain even has brown discoloration.”

***

Here is a photo from yesterday in Moruya, which is about 300 kilometers southwest along the coast from Sydney. Direct Relief sent 4 pallets of masks there, arriving today.

***

From Chris Alleway’s Direct Relief Emergency Response Situation Update:

“Recent spouts of rain have occurred in New South Wales, South Australia, and Victoria, but despite the small reprieve, many fires continue to burn throughout Australia. Although, it has brought a sense of hope since the first fires began in October, the fight is far from over.”

Alleway also reports that an increasing focus of public health authorities is to educate the public on the dangers presented in burned areas, such as by asbestos. Asbestos was used pervasively in Kangaroo Island, which has been one of the hardest hit areas in Australia over the past months of bushfires.

January 15- A dispatch from Chris Alleway, a member of Direct Relief’s emergency response team, from New South Wales:

“The chemist shops (drug stores) are short on all kinds of respiratory supplies, like inhalers, and masks are definitely a part of that.”

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on this issue here:

https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/through-the-roof-retailer-flies-in-thousands-of-face-masks-as-demand-rockets-20200109-p53q3s.html

***

Last week, in addition to bushfires, Australia was hit with dust storms, which spanned thousands of kilometers across the continent, according to NASA.

Here is a photo provided by the space agency, which was captured by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8.

***

A dispatch from Gordon Willcock, deputy director of Direct Relief’s emergency response team, in Moyhu in Victoria, Australia:

“They’ve been under threat from local fires and inundated by smoke for days. Local farmers have been cutting fire breaks and setting up their properties ready to defend them and livestock from fire.”

January 14-   Andrew Schroeder, vice president of research and analysis at Direct Relief, was interviewed by Factal’s Tyler Adams on the innovative ways he and his team are using the breaking news verification platform, along with mapping technology from Esri, to improve disaster response operations.

Read the full interview here:

January 13– Direct Relief has sent 430,000 N95/P2 masks to Australia, including 111,500 small size masks for children, with the help of Qantas.

The masks have been shipped to partners in Melbourne and Sydney for free distribution to first responders as well as impacted populations.

***

Air quality returned to “Poor” today in Victoria, Australia, with “Hazardous” quality foretasted for Tuesday in parts of the state, after an improvement to “Good” over the weekend.

Poor air quality is defined by the Environmental Protection Authority Victoria as:

“The air is probably dusty or smoky. Sensitive groups may experience symptoms like coughing or shortness of breath.”

Hazardous air quality is defined as:

“The air is probably extremely dusty or smoky. Everyone could be experiencing symptoms like coughing or shortness of breath.”

The latest official air quality ratings can be viewed here: https://www.epa.vic.gov.au/airwatch

***

Lara Cooper, Managing Editor of Digital Content and Strategy, from Melbourne:

“The importance of the mask distribution came into sharp focus as we spoke to an airport staff member, who saw our masks. He told us his elderly parents in New South Wales had been evacuated from their mobile home, stayed in their vehicle for two nights and then a local shelter. They’ve now returned home, since evacuations in their area were lifted, but air quality is a lingering concern, especially since his 83-year-old father already had breathing issues.”

January 12- Lara Cooper, Managing Editor of Digital Content and Strategy, with a dispatch from Melbourne:

“Residents in Melbourne had a reprieve over the weekend from the smoke with rains clearing the air. But on Monday, air quality in Melbourne has deteriorated again, and the smell of smoke is pervasive throughout the city. The skyline is currently shrouded in haze settling in from the bushfires. Health officials are urging people to be mindful of their time outside, especially people with preexistíng respiratory issues.”

January 11- As they have for so many previous disasters, the video game community has whipped into action, with streamers conducting charity streams to benefit wildfire responders and victims.

“Redzy,” who is based in the U.K. and “Blarg,” who is based in France,  are two gamers who ran charity streams this week.  Redzy will have an additional stream tomorrow, viewable on Twitch starting at 11 a.m. GMT.

January 10 – Direct Relief has shipped 317,500 masks to Australia, with another 112,500  on the way, all shipped, gratis, via Qantas Airlines.

Chris Alleway, a member of Direct Relief’s emergency response team, reports the following:

“The situation worsened as conditions were moved to extremely dangerous in New South Wales and parts of Victoria. High temperatures and winds increased activity, connecting two major fires into one, creating what they are calling a “mega blaze’.

“The next 48 hours will be crucial to halting major advancements of these fires, but there seems to be reprieve on the horizon with some light showers expected to fall in some of the affected areas.”

Alleyway noted that power is a major concern.

“…the fires are threatening an area that generates 1/3 of the power for the city of Melbourne, a population of over 5 million. If the power infrastructure is damaged or lost, repercussions could be catastrophic to the healthcare facilities without backup power and the local economy.”

January 9 – Direct Relief journalist Noah Smith looked at how animals are being impacted, which species are most at-risk, and how wildlife aid groups are being pressed into emergency response roles: Amid Australia’s Devastating Wildfires, Animal Rescue Groups Working Overtime

The Age covers Direct Relief’s shipment of 160,000 N95 masks: State on edge as weather conditions worsen

The Sydney Morning Herald reports on Direct Relief’s shipment: Through the roof’: Retailer flies in thousands of face masks as demand rockets

ABC’s Detroit affiliate, WXYZ, on critical factors to consider when contributing to the fire relief in Australia: Things to keep in mind when donating to Australian wildfire relief efforts, according to the BBB

January 7 – Andrew Schroeder, vice president of research and analysis at Direct Relief, reports on how the latest Facebook-provided data can help officials ” in determining the areas most at risk from fires and smoke in order to optimize distribution plans for masks and other health supplies.” Australian Bushfires: Mapping Population Dynamics

January 6 – Direct Relief journalist Talya Meyers covered the response to the fires, which involves shipping pallets full of N95 masks, in coordination with Australia’s Department of Health, Department of Environment, Land, Water, and Planning, the Victorian Country Fire Authority, and the Australian Red Cross: Australian Wildfires Prompt Global Outpouring of Support

January 3 – Melbourne-based Gordon Willcock, deputy director of Direct Relief’s emergency response team, with a status update and some additional context on the fires: Mass Evacuations Underway as Australian Wildfires Rage On

“Wildfires occur every summer in Australia, however, the current scale is unprecedented. A severe drought, which led to the hottest, driest year on record in Australia, combined with sustained high temperatures and windy conditions in December have created an exceedingly dangerous fire situation…”

The post Australian Wildfires – A Live Story appeared first on Direct Relief.

Direct Relief has reallocated the masks from the stockpile it maintains to help protect Californians during periods of heavy wildfire smoke. Last week, the group ordered an additional 1.5 million breathing masks to be manufactured, both to backstop any additional needs in Australia and to prepare for the 2020 wildfire season in the Western United States.

While people in some of the world’s most polluted cities have long worn breathing masks (albeit often ineffective dust or surgical masks), widespread distribution of breathing masks in places like California and Australia had never been a consideration in the past. But years of devastating wildfires amid the warmest decade in recorded human history has changed the calculus of needs.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the California Department of Public Health have issued extensive guidance about health risks from wildfire, including the type and proper use of respirators as protection. Persons with asthma or other respiratory or heart conditions face elevated risks from particulate matter in wildfire smoke. The N95 designation used in the U.S. is a P2 designation in Australia.

California’s Stockpile Diverted for Australia

Direct Relief’s experience responding to a series of largest-ever wildfires in its home state of California in recent years identified a sharp need for a ready-for-immediate-distribution stockpile of N95/P2 masks, which can filter tiny particles out of the air when fitted properly and are recommended by public health authorities. That analysis led Direct Relief last year to contract manufacture N95 masks in sufficient volumes to meet fire-related demand spikes of the type that had consistently exceeded availability and caused shortages when most needed.

“The historic fires in California have made everyone so keenly aware of the air-quality health risks that massive fires cause, as well as the frustration and concern of being advised to use particular types of masks that get stocked out fast and are unavailable,” said Direct Relief President and CEO Thomas Tighe. “Our Aussie friends are, unfortunately, encountering the exact scenario that prompted Direct Relief’s stockpiling plan, so of course our team and supporters have been thankful to be able to pitch in.”

Since shipping the first batch of masks on Jan. 6 via air transportation donated by Qantas, Direct Relief has delivered 430,000 masks to Australia, of which more than 260,000 have been distributed to Australian partners.

Among the partners receiving the most masks to date are the Australian Red Cross, local Rotary Clubs, and Convoy of Hope, which are in turn distributing them to people needing them in local communities. Direct Relief has also distributed masks to Surf Life Saving Australia for its lifeguard members, RSPCA for volunteers in the field rescuing animals, and local brigades of the Rural Fire Service. The orange-colored masks supplied by Direct Relief are provided at no charge to local organizations to distribute onward for free.

N95/P2 masks only work if they are fitted closely to the face. If retail stores carry N95/P2 masks at all, most only carry them in one size. Direct Relief has delivered more than 110,000 small masks to Australia, where if fitted properly they may be used by people with smaller faces.

The post A Million Masks: Direct Relief Doubles Contribution of N95 (P2) Particulate Respirators for Smoke-Filled Australia appeared first on Direct Relief.

The town of Picton, which sits about 50 miles southwest of Sydney, and the surrounding communities, are no exception to the devastation. Many community members have been evacuated multiple times, and all have been breathing thick, smoky air settling into every corner. About 30 homes in the surrounding areas have been lost, and residents are watchful that winds could change at any time – and with it – the situation.

Even with the hardship, residents of the area have stepped up to work overtime to help one other. One of those people is Allison Cox, a Picton resident who has been working, along with other neighbors, to care for those impacted by the fires.

“I’ve been very aware of this fire since October,” Cox told Direct Relief staff this week, as a wave of respiratory masks left storage in Picton to be distributed to the community at large. Wildfires introduce a toxic mix of particulates into the air, which can exacerbate breathing issues and have serious health repercussions.

This week, even though the air was clearer than it had been, the smell of smoke, a mix of wood fire and chemicals, still hung heavy. It’s become somewhat indistinguishable to those living in it.

“I don’t even smell it anymore,” Cox said.

Between her work at a local school and with a nonprofit group that serves children with disabilities, Cox still took the time to coordinate distributions of Direct Relief masks so that anyone in need would be able to access them.

She’s a member of Picton Rotary, and with coordination from Rotary groups in Sydney and Melbourne, members were able to quickly get out the word in the community that mask distributions would take place.

Rotary members were able to quickly secure storage space for the masks and create distribution events for the public. Cox was also able to coordinate with local firefighters, who picked up 15,000 masks for their crews and community members.

“We have a great network. They arrived in Melbourne the other day and we’ve got 10 pallets in Picton… so they’ll be available for our firefighters and available for anyone cleaning up,” said Dianne North of Rotary District 9675, which includes Picton.

Cox brought Direct Relief staff to the Wollondilly Emergency Control Center,  where a steady hum of firefighters, logistics planners, geographers, water quality experts, and others studied the latest information on the fire lines, working to forecast how, and where, it might move next.

Because of the break in the weather, the operations center was relatively calm, and volunteers had been encouraged to take a break and rest. Monitoring fatigue among volunteers had become essential.

Fire Inspector David Stimson said that in his decades of firefighting, this blaze was unprecedented. Firefighters and technicians had been cycling through the center, some from Canada and the U.S., to backfill operations and share expertise.

Even before the fires, drought had become so intense that grazing is no longer possible for livestock in the area, and owners had been forced to hand-feed their animals for the last two years because of the arid conditions.

In the control center, operations personnel examined a screen showing spot fires all over a map of New South Wales.

Another screen showed an unforgiving mountainside that descended into a steep ravine below.

“That’s the terrain that firefighters are dealing with,” one coordinator said.

Just down the road from the control center was a small wooden building, set up not to monitor the fire, but to help people recover from it. Burned forest sits for miles around the building, and blackened fence encircling the center showed just how close the flames came.

Staffing the center was Kim Hill, who is a volunteer firefighter for the Rural Fire Service’s Buxton brigade, in addition to her work at the recovery center. Like many firefighters in Australia, she is a volunteer, on top of managing a day job.

Hill said about 30 homes were lost in the area, and that she and her family were evacuated just days before Christmas, when wind-whipped flames swept through her subdivision.

Two homes in Hill’s neighborhood were lost, and the dramatic firefighting of that night is still obvious. A blackened hillside sits just yards from Hill’s front door, a testament to the firefighting efforts to save structures.

Her family evacuated, and though they lost several sheds, their home is still standing.

Now, Hill is working to make sure others have what they need as they start their recovery process, and hopefully use the resources at the center. She’s worked to coordinate housing for people, and has picked up food donated by local businesses to feed others.

The center’s sideyard houses about five shipping containers filled with donated clothing, hygiene supplies and power tools for cleanup, all neatly organized and ready for anyone who needs them.

“We have our tears, we have our moments, but that’s part of the process,” Hill said.

While unloading masks for distribution the recovery center, Hill and Cox noticed clean-up workers nearby didn’t have any.

The crew was using chainsaws to bring down unstable trees and begin mulching fallen timber safely.

Through the grief that the community is processing, it helps to help others.

“It’s just what we do,” Cox said.

The post Neighbors Helping Neighbors in Fire-Ravaged New South Wales appeared first on Direct Relief.

The eruption comes a day after a shower of ash burst from the volcano, blanketing the surrounding area and polluting the air. By Monday, the ash had traveled 44 miles to the capital, Manila.

The burst was accompanied by a series of earthquakes and rumbling sounds. While no significant damage has been reported, authorities cautioned Sunday that the quakes could trigger a volcanic tsunami.

It may be just the beginning. The Taal volcano, as it’s known, could erupt again, more severely, at any moment. The Philippines Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) has warned of an “imminent hazardous eruption” that could take place “within hours or days.”

About 460,000 people within an immediate danger zone – a circle around the volcano with a radius of about 8.5 miles – have been told to evacuate.

Phivolcs has assigned the eruption a Level 4 alert, indicating increasing volcanic activity. The highest alert, Level 5, is reserved for situations when a hazardous eruption is actively ongoing.

The surrounding state of Batangas has also declared “a state of calamity.”

Thousands have fled to temporary evacuation centers. However, many people who initially obeyed the evacuation order have returned to homes inside the danger zone, according to the New York Times.

The eruption raised concerns about a large-scale calamity on par with the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines’ Zambales Mountains, which killed 800 people and displaced over 200,000.

Although the Taal volcano is comparatively small, it is highly dangerous: an extremely active fissure in the earth’s crust surrounded by a dense population and a lake that serves as a popular tourist attraction.

Even the presence of volcanic ash poses a significant health hazard. A nasal, respiratory, and ocular irritant, volcanic ash is particularly hazardous for already vulnerable people, including pregnant women, older adults, children, and those with respiratory or heart issues.

The poisonous gases and trace materials present when volcanic ash emerges are dangerous to humans, animals, and plants. In particular, the toxic element fluorine can have a devastating impact on livestock and agriculture.

Direct Relief has a staff member on the ground in the Philippines who is actively coordinating the organization’s disaster response.

An emergency shipment of 42,000 N95 masks, designed to filter out even minute particles in the air, will depart Direct Relief’s warehouse today, bound for the Philippine Red Cross in Manila.

In addition, the organization’s emergency response team is communicating with the ASEAN Coordinating Center for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA), along with other local partners, to see what additional assistance may be needed.

Earlier this year, in preparation for a disaster like the current disruption, Direct Relief positioned $500,000 in emergency response materials in AHA’s disaster logistics center in Manila. The materials are ready to be quickly distributed to disaster-affected communities as need dictates.

Daniel Hovey and Ledrolen Manriquez contributed additional reporting to this story.

The post The Philippines’ Erupting Volcano is a Public Health Threat appeared first on Direct Relief.

While conditions slightly improved over the weekend, experts cautioned that hot, dry conditions will continue to spur the blaze onward this week. Authorities, including Australian prime minister Scott Morrison, have cautioned that the fires could continue for months.

While wildfires are a regular part of the weather cycle in Australia – the season begins every summer – the size and severity of the current crop of blazes is seemingly unprecedented, creating long-term consequences for the country’s wildlife, health, and livelihoods.

Aside from the immediate dangers posed by the wildfires themselves, deteriorating air quality can cause or exacerbate a range of health issues, from respiratory distress to heart attacks. Older adults, young children, and those with existing health issues are particularly vulnerable.

Australia doesn’t generally need assistance during a disaster. The current situation, however, is extraordinary.

Direct Relief is coordinating with a number of Australian agencies and organizations – including the Department of Health, the Department of Environment, Land, Water, and Planning, the Victorian Country Fire Authority, and the Australian Red Cross – to deliver vital supplies.

In particular, the organization is delivering 97,500 N95 masks, which are designed to block minute particles in the air from entering the airways and lungs.

The post Australian Wildfires Prompt Global Outpouring of Support appeared first on Direct Relief.

600 firefighters are currently assigned to the Cave Fire, which is burning in Los Padres National Forest, near Highway 154, which connects Santa Barbara to the famed wine-making Santa Ynez Valley. There have not been any reports of structural damage or injuries. A mandatory evacuation order is in place for more than 2,000 homes.

The fire was carried along by strong winds last night, though they have since died down to the single digits, leading the neighboring Ventura County Sheriff’s reporting that “conditions have improved.”

Rain is forecast for tomorrow, which will further aid in controlling the fire, but also raises the specter of debris flows, as happened in Montecito to a tragic effect in 2018, killing 23 people.

The blaze is taking place just a few miles from Direct Relief’s Headquarters. Early Tuesday morning, the sky was blotchy with smoke, which could be smelled inside the office. Ash was present in the parking lot and surrounding areas. The fire was obscured by plumes of smoke emerging from the mountains, but had been clearly visible last night along the 101 freeway, which cuts through Santa Barbara.

Direct Relief has made more than 11,000 N95 masks available to the public for free, and will be distributing them at its headquarters as well as appointed places throughout the community, at the direction of public health and city officials.

Masks will be available for the public at the following locations from noon until 5pm local time:

Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinic – Isla Vista Clinic: 970 Embarcadero Del Mar, Isla Vista CA 93117
Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinic – Goleta Clinic: 5580 Calle Real, Goleta CA 93111
Goleta City Hall – 130 Cremona Drive Goleta CA 93117
Goleta Community Center – 5679 Hollister Ave, Goleta CA 93117
Direct Relief HQ Lobby – 6100 Wallace Becknell Road, Santa Barbara CA 93117

UCSB and Sansum Clinic will be distributing masks internally.

Additional reporting contributed by Amarica Rafanelli.

The post Cave Fire Threatens Santa Barbara appeared first on Direct Relief.

For agricultural workers⁠—the region’s economic backbone—the fire poses more ominous questions about the future. These workers rely on the land for work. If this land is destroyed, so is their livelihood.

These kinds of uncertainties have heightened anxiety amongst evacuees, causing physical health problems to emerge. Headaches, heart palpitations, and high blood pressure are just some of the symptoms medical staff are seeing in their patients.

On this episode of our podcast, we speak with Pedro Toledo of the Petaluma Health Center, whose staff is combating anxiety-induced health problems through mental health services. The health center has staffed multiple shelters across the city with behavioral health providers who are helping evacuees work through their stress.

The post Stress Headaches and Fluttering Heartbeats. The Kincade Fire is Eroding Mental Health. appeared first on Direct Relief.

Respiratory ailments and hospitalizations increase. Patients with chronic diseases – many of whom have left their medications behind – watch previously well-managed conditions bloom into crises. People dependent on medical devices can be left without a power source. And as evacuees crowd together into shelters, infectious diseases can spread like, well, wildfire.

With blazes cropping up around California and blackouts leaving millions in the dark, the state’s Department of Public Health, and several of its nonprofit community health centers, have reached out to Direct Relief for help.

What do they need? Everything from N95 masks – which can block up to 95% of the minute particles released into the air during a wildfire – to antiviral medicines for people sheltering in cramped facilities. Health centers that have sprung into action to care for the people streaming into their community need funding – fast – to deal with the huge increase in operating costs.

“People who are vulnerable on a normal day are particularly vulnerable during an emergency, and Direct Relief is doing everything possible to make sure health services are available to those who need them and have few options,” said Thomas Tighe, Direct Relief’s president and CEO.

On Sunday, Direct Relief promised up to $1 million in cash and resources to local health centers affected by or responding to the current crisis.

And today, the organization’s emergency response team is on the ground in Northern California, delivering more than 100,000 N95 masks, oxygen concentrators, and respiratory medications to health care organizations caring for patients affected by the fire.

The current cluster of fires also overlaps with the beginning of flu season, when the virus is increasingly present in communities, but many people still haven’t been vaccinated.

The threat that the flu poses in crowded California shelters recalls the aftermath of the 2018 Camp Fire, when shelters housing Butte County evacuees were hit with outbreaks of norovirus, a highly contagious illness that causes nausea and vomiting.

To prevent a similar situation from occurring, the California Department of Public Health has requested additional supplies of Tamiflu, an antiviral medication, which Direct Relief will provide.

During an emergency, hygiene is more important than ever. To help people displaced by the fires remain clean and comfortable, the organization is currently providing personal hygiene kits to shelters housing evacuees.

As California’s electricity providers shut off power to communities throughout the state, health centers housing temperature-sensitive vaccines and other medications, such as insulin, are vulnerable. A Direct Relief survey found that only 44% of health centers have an alternate source of power.

For health centers lacking a backup generator, Direct Relief has a number of batteries and generators available, which the organization will supply to health centers as needed.

Nonetheless, it’s likely that as the blackouts continue, some temperature-sensitive vaccinations will be lost. Direct Relief has supplies of insulin and other cold-chain medications in its Santa Barbara warehouse, and the organization will provide these to health centers whose supplies are compromised or lost.

“Mass evacuations create heightened risks for people with chronic conditions that, if unmanaged, can rapidly become acute health crises,” Tighe said. “That’s why Direct Relief has made its medical inventories available and is working closely with local and state public health officials and its corporate healthcare partners to ensure availability and rapid delivery of essential medications in the unfolding, dynamic situation.”

The post As Wildfires Displace Hundreds of Thousands, Direct Relief Dispatches Aid, Funding appeared first on Direct Relief.

Though the fire is less of a threat to large population centers now, the situation appeared much different last Friday and Saturday to Dr. Christian Espinoza, chief medical officer at MEND, a free clinic in the San Fernando Valley, as the fire’s toll and path were yet to determined.

Espinoza recounted to Direct Relief how a line of patients were already waiting outside when he got into work on Friday morning. He remembers thinking, correctly, that his team would run out of asthma medications before everyone in line could be treated.

“Medicines, dental care, medical care are really more of a luxury than anything else. It’s very unfortunate,” Espinoza said, referring to the patients at MEND, which serves one of the lowest income areas of the San Fernando Valley.

Natural disasters such as the Saddleridge Fire disproportionately impact vulnerable populations, such as those with low incomes or who experience language barriers. Of the 700 people MEND treats annually, 79% are Latinos and about half of them do not speak English, according to Espinoza.

As an example of the kinds of hardships faced by their patients, Espinoza said that many live in garages or other substandard units, which often have poor ventilation. For these individuals, N-95 masks, which are optimized for fire debris, can take on an increased level of importance.

“They sleep with their masks on,” he said.

MEND was also running low on these masks by mid-day on Friday, when they were forced to close, due to staff needing stay at their homes to protect them from the fire or to pick up their children from schools, which also closed early.

Coordinating with Direct Relief, MEND — which does not receive federal funds as a free, non-federally qualified health clinic — was able to get resupplied with masks and asthma medication by early Saturday morning, with further deliveries set to arrive this week from Direct Relief’s Santa Barbara warehouse, including insulin and more medications, personal care products, and other medical supplies.

According to Espinoza, the supplies were a “godsend” over the weekend, given the uptick in patients and rash of cancellations from volunteer health care providers at the clinic, which also serves as a food bank and clothing distributor.

“People weren’t aware of if the winds would shift or not,” he said, adding that many stores had closed, leaving people without access to a car with fewer options to purchase food, if they had the means to do so. Even with the resupply from Direct Relief shipment, MEND still ran out of masks — 200 in total — by noon on Saturday.

“It’s a simple thing, the masks, you can get them cheap, but they cant afford this. It’s just something we are able to provide for them, until they figure out their next steps,” he said

Espinoza said the facility was able to respond more effectively to this fire than to the ones that plagued his community last year. Despite having been raised in the San Fernando Valley, Espinoza said he was unprepared for the onslaught of now-annual fires.

“Last year, we weren’t ready for this. I was living out of state and was unaware of the yearly nature of these fires,” he said.

Assessing the coming days, Espinoza said he already has a list of asthmatic patients, a condition irritated by the smoke and debris, who need critical medication. He anticipates many more patients coming in to seek treatment for that and other chronic condition, as it typical after natural disasters.

With the challenges, however, Espinoza said that he was looking forward to being able to care for more patients.

“During our Wednesday diabetic clinics, we can’t always give out enough, so patients have to find the means of purchasing it. This time, I was able to secure some insulin from Direct Relief,” he said.

“A lot of people are going to be very happy this coming Wednesday.”

In addition to MEND, Direct Relief was also able to support health care and evacuation operations at the Simi Valley Free Clinic, American Red Cross shelters in Los Angeles, and for farm workers in Ventura and Oxnard counties, with Emergency Medical Backpacks, medications, medical and personal hygiene supplies, and a back-up power unit.

Reflecting on the past weekend, Espinoza said one interaction stuck with him the most. It was a patient, a mother of two, to whom he gave MEND’s last asthma inhaler. The medicine cannot be purchased for less than $200, and he knew that would mean the patient would have to go without.

“The minute I showed her the box, she didn’t say anything. But her face just lit up,” he said. “It was the relief that she would be able to breathe.”

The post In the Haze of the Saddleridge Fire, Helping Patients Breathe appeared first on Direct Relief.

Presuming you’re out of immediate physical danger, your short-range risk will come from large particles, released into the air as the fire burns through material, and noxious gases like sulfur and nitrogen dioxide, which inflame the respiratory system and make it difficult to breathe.

“As you get a little further away, we worry about particulates, which are [about] a sixtieth of the size of a human hair,” says Brian Christman, a professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University and spokesperson for the American Lung Association.

The problem

Christman explained that these tiny particulates – the scientific community calls them PM2.5 – are so small that, when breathed into the lungs, they can cross the blood-air barrier and circulate in the bloodstream, increasing the risk of heart attacks.

That’s just one of the potential health consequences of inhaling wildfire smoke.

A recent study found that children exposed to high levels of PM2.5 experienced fundamental changes to their immune systems, making it more likely that they’d develop allergies or infections. Another suggested that exposure to wildfire smoke can affect a newborn’s birth weight. And wildfires are known to increase respiratory-related hospitalizations and even deaths.

But the effects of wildfire smoke aren’t fully known yet. “There hasn’t been a focus on wildfires until the past few years, when they’ve really increased with climate change,” said Mary Prunicki, the director of Air Pollution and Health Research at Stanford University’s Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy research. “I don’t think it’s been on a lot of people’s radar.”

Complicating matters, Prunicki said, is the fact that “wildfire smoke” can vary. A forest fire burns different compounds from a fire that’s making its way through a town. Neither, however, is good for your health.

The Tool

Enter the N95 mask. Properly fitted, the mask is designed to filter out 95% of particles larger than 0.3 microns across. “It’s fairly effective in reducing exposure to the high-level particulates you see in these circumstances,” Christman said.

And for many dealing with a fire in the near – or even not-so-near – vicinity, it’s a great first line of defense. “Particles can travel hundreds of miles,” said Kent Pinkerton, a professor of pediatrics at UC Davis who studies the effects of pollutants on the respiratory system.

During the Camp Fire, he explained, the highest concentrations of smoke were actually found in the Bay Area, about three hours away. “Those kinds of situations are something that is hard to control for,” he said.

Those are precisely the kind of situations – when you’ll be exposed to particles in the air but have to be outside some of the time – in which experts recommend using the N95.

The Limitations

Not everyone agrees. During the Camp Fire last year, Sacramento County’s Department of Health Services recommended N95 masks only for those actually in a fire zone. Because the mask restricts the flow of air –the unfortunate consequence of breathing through a filter, Pinkerton said – the county’s public health officer deemed it dangerous for people with heart or respiratory conditions.

In addition, the Department of Health Services pointed out that the presence of an N95 mask might “encourage outdoor activity which could worsen exposure” – in effect, that it would create a false sense of security.

There are other limitations. To work properly, an N95 mask has to be properly fitted to your face so that a seal is created around the edges, and a regular-sized mask won’t fit a child or anyone with a beard.

And while the mask is designed to filter even tiny particles, it won’t work at all on toxic gases – which means it’s not an effective tool for anyone up close to a fire.

Christman cautioned that even the way you breathe can affect how effective the mask is. “If you’re breathing more normally, you have more of a circuitous pathway to your mouth and nose,” he said. If you’re exerting yourself or otherwise breathing quickly, you’re more likely to pull air from around the mask.

The N95 doesn’t just protect against wildfire smoke. Medical professionals use the masks to prevent the transmission of infectious diseases, as do people whose work exposes them to tiny particles (think construction workers and cabinet makers).

Most of the evidence that the masks work come from these other uses, not from wildfires. “It makes sense that it obviously would help during wildfire smoke exposure, but there’s not a lot of [scientific] literature regarding the improved health outcomes from wearing the masks,” Prunicki said.

The best approach

Yet the research does suggest that for small particles – precisely the kind that are most dangerous to people a short distance away from a wildfire – the mask is a valuable defense tool. “That’s the reason it has been recommended for many different conditions when air quality may not be so good,” Pinkerton said.

In short, whether you’re waiting to be evacuated or just need to walk around in an area with poor air quality, the N95 is your friend. Make sure it’s formed a seal around your face, and breathe normally for maximum protection.

However, cautions Janice Nolan, a spokesperson for the American Lung Association, the N95 doesn’t give you a free pass to walk around in unsafe air. It’s important to get inside – preferably somewhere with recirculated air and a filter – as quickly as possible. It’s also a good idea to use towels around the cracks of doors and windows to keep particles from getting into the building.

“Don’t treat a day when you have poor air quality as though you could do anything you want,” Pinkerton said.

The post The N95 Mask: A User’s Guide appeared first on Direct Relief.