Merlin specialises in health, saving lives in times of crisis and helping to rebuild shattered health services
- Merlin specializes in health, saving lives in times of crisis and helping to rebuild shattered health services.
- How we work: Merlin works within existing health systems to realize everyone’s right to accessible, appropriate, affordable health care.
- What we stand for: … (full text about 1/2).
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About 2/2 /What we do: … Responding to natural disasters:
- Cyclone Nargis devastated the Ayyarwaddy Delta area of Myanmar in May 2008, leaving more than 130,000 people dead or missing and a million forced from their homes. The cyclone also claimed the lives of one-third of the 550 health workers that Merlin trained. Some survivors lost their entire families. Yet they and Merlin teams treated the injured within days of the cyclone, distributing food and materials for repairing damaged homes and repairing water supplies to prevent outbreaks of disease.
- Merlin responded to severe floods in Bangladesh, Uganda and western Pakistan in 2007 that left millions homeless. Medical teams traveled by jeep, in boats, and sometimes on foot to reach the affected areas.
- In the aftermath of the earthquake that ravaged northern Pakistan in 2005, killing 73,000 and leaving two million homeless, Merlin established an air mobile medical team and five field clinics. Throughout the winter in remote mountain villages, Merlin worked to treat the injured and prevent outbreaks of pneumonia and diphtheria.
- Merlin arrived in Sri Lanka within 48 hours of the Tsunami disaster of December 2004 and was the first international health NGO to plan a coordinated relief effort with the local Ministry of Health. We were also on the ground in Indonesia and Myanmar.
Saving lives in times of conflict:
- In Darfur (Sudan), Merlin’s 10 fixed and nine mobile health clinics help thousands of people who have fled their villages to escape the violence in the region, as well as to the populations who now host them. About 270,000 people are treated each year.
- When large-scale violence broke out in Kenya over the presidential elections in December 2007, Merlin was the first medical agency to respond, running mobile health clinics for 40,000 refugees in the Nakuru and Nyanza districts.
- Merlin has been working since 1997 in Africa’s deadliest conflict zone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, to provide essential medical support for more than 100 primary and secondary health facilities that serve a million people.
- Merlin was one of the first international NGOs to enter Baghdad after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime in April 2003, distributing medical aid to revitalize primary and pediatric health care, and providing water and sanitation equipment to prevent disease outbreaks.
Preventing disease:
- In mid-2007, cholera and measles – a major killer of children – swept through the masses of people displaced by conflict in the North Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Merlin mobile health teams performed mass measles vaccinations and set up cholera treatment programs. Disease rates dropped dramatically.
- In Kenya, Merlin is working with the government on malaria prevention and treatment programs; HIV/AIDS prevention, behavior change and treatment projects; and on tuberculosis control through early diagnosis and better treatment. This model of comprehensive care is being copied in many parts of Africa. More than 110,000 people a year are benefiting.
- In its founding year, Merlin vaccinated 10,000 children against measles in the troubled Nagorno-Karabakh region of the Caucasus. Since then our programs have supported immunization campaigns to protect children from deadly diseases throughout Africa and Asia.
Rebuilding health systems:
- Merlin established a community midwife education system in Takhar Province, Afghanistan, where 86 per cent of women give birth without a skilled attendant and the maternal mortality rate is the second highest in the world, at 1,900 per 100,000 live births.
- Following the destruction of Liberia’s health infrastructure during the civil war, Merlin worked in seven counties to provide health care, water and sanitation, and repair health facilities and train health staff for a population of 1.7 million people.
- In Ethiopia, Merlin helped establish a primary health care service in the drought-prone region of Oromiya which serves 600,000 people.