Cyclone Idai • Mozambique
Flood Relief - March - May 2019
NATAN International Humanitarian Aid sent an emergency response delegation to Beira, Mozambique, following the devastating Cyclone Idai which made landfall on March 14th. The operation lasted 2 months.
Cyclone Idai is regarded as one of the worst weather-related disasters on record to affect Africa and the Southern Hemisphere as a whole. Cyclone Idai made a direct hit at Beira, the fourth largest city in Mozambique with more than 500,000 residents and continued towards Zimbabwe and Malawi. Approximately 1.7 million people were affected, and over 1,000 people died. The storm destroyed most of Beira’s telecom infrastructure, electricity and water supply, land passage from Maputo (the capital) to Beira and there was a high risk of waterborne diseases including cholera and malaria. Inland, water levels reached approximately 6 meters high, covering homes, schools, water sources, palm trees and telephone poles.
NATAN members meeting with locals.
Partnerships: NATAN partnered with two exceptional organizations: The JDC and Honen Dalim, the Jewish Community of Mozambique. Honen Dalim was incredibly supportive and proactive–helping our teams on the ground with logistics, local knowledge, and more. We also collaborated with local and international organizations, including CADENA, who have been long-time partners and friends and who delivered life-saving water filters to the area. Other collaborative partners included Mercy Air, which flew our teams to remote areas via helicopter.
Teams: 13 Natan Volunteers & 3 JDC volunteers spent 2 months in Mozambique, mostly in the area of Beira. An assessment team (4 volunteers) left for Mozambique 12 days after the cyclone hit. The team collaborated and made important contacts with different key people and organizations such as the UN clusters/sub clusters directors and coordinators, specific working groups, local and international NGOs. Read first person stories from our team members who served in the Mozambique operation!
Dr. Tal Hanani, MD - Mission Leader/Medical Aid; Dr. Eitan Shahar – Trauma & Resilience Aid; Oded Gal, Paramedic - Medical Aid & Logistics; Dr. Sharon Kronfeld Shaul, MD - Medical Aid; Dr. Mick Alkan, MD - Medical Aid; Mike Attinson and Eliran Douenias - JDC-NATAN Collaboration; Yaron Dadon, WASH; Amit Kahn, Mission Leader/ Medical Aid, Logistics; Tal Shami – Trauma & Resilience Aid; Dr. Efi Halperin, MD - Medical Aid; Gili Katalan – Trauma & Resilience Aid; Tamar Rechtman – Trauma & Resilience Aid; Oded Regev – Mission Leader, Logistics; Amit Zohar – Trauma & Resilience Aid; Yarden Shmueli – Trauma & Resilience Aid; Moshe Farchi – Trauma & Resilience Training and Academic Partnership
Field Clinics: In the initial days, our team members joined volunteer helicopter pilots on fly-overs to identify areas of need. The helicopters landed our teams at remote locations where they saw people gathered at the site of former villages, washed out by the floods. At each location, a doctor and paramedic carried out medical assessments and provided first aid and primary care at makeshift field clinics, often outdoors.
Meanwhile other team members helped the villagers to filter water. During these helicopter forays, our teams treated over 200 patients. Main complaints included: diarrhea, pediatric URI, trauma, skin and wound infections caused while searching for higher ground to escape the floods or from debris caused by the strong wind, malnutrition conditions (breastfeeding mothers and babies) worsened by the cyclone and its devastating impact on crops as main food resource and lack of access to operating healthcare services. Waterborne illnesses included cholera, malaria, typhoid and bacterial infections causing acute watery diarrhea and dehydration.
Read our stories from Mozambique:
Clean drinking water is the difference between life and death in a disaster area plagued by waterborne illnesses. Our teams flew to remote locations struck by Cyclone Idai and taught local people to use the portable NUF water filter so that they could purify their own water. The NUF system can filter up to 500 liters of water within one hour, using a hand-pump, with no dependency on electricity. Providing safe, clean water is a vital life-saving step in the field of WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene). Our teams also taught locals the importance of hygiene, especially hand-washing, in preventing illness.
Trauma & Resilience Aid: The Sao Pedro Camp for displaced families on the outskirts of Beira run by the UN agency, IOM (International Organization for Migration), is one of several established to allow thousands of Mozambicans to vacate the public, school and hospital buildings where many displaced people sought safety following Cyclone Idai. Our team was selected by IOM as the psychosocial focal point within the camp. At another camp in the Beira area, Terra Prometida, our team members trained volunteers from two organizations: ASATE and AVSI, who are now carrying on this work at that camp.
Trauma & Resilience Training: NATAN formed a collaboration with UP Beira, the Universidade Pedagógica of Mozambique, in Beira. Our team members trained student volunteers to provide psycho-social counseling to survivors of Cyclone Idai and its aftermath. The program is led by Dr. Celso Miambo of UP Beira. After 6 weeks of working with the students, the team returned to Israel. Two weeks later, Dr. Moshe Farchi flew to Mozambique to finalize the project. Dr. Farchi delivered a final lectore and PSS seminar, met with faculty and students at the university and distributed certificates of appreciation to participants. Meanwhile, at Terra Prometida camp in the Beira area.
Field Notes: Every mission begins with a decision to take action. NATAN’s leadership met at HQ shortly after we got news of the devastating cyclone which hit Mozambique mid-March. Here’s how our mission began:
NATAN leadership held an emergency meeting at HQ in Tel Aviv. Chairperson Danny Kahn introduced the issues, followed by a briefing on the cyclone and the floods which followed - destroying farmland and bringing disease. NATAN decided unanimously to take action.
NATAN medical relief team members check out the contents of our ‘Go-Bags’ - EMI Emergency Response Intervention kits - to make sure they contain only fresh medicines and supplies, all intact, per international regulations.
At the airport: the first team left within 2 days of that initial meeting.
Excess Baggage Dilemma: Too many bags. These bags are filled with valuable medicines and supplies, critical to the life-saving relief operation following Cyclone Idai in Mozambique. But according to airline regs, there's just one too many...
After a quick trip to the cashier's window to pay for the extra bag, the luggage is finally tagged and sent on its way.
We spoke to team members just before boarding the plane. In Eitan's words: "There are so many unknowns. Though we've done our best to get ready, we don't know what will happen. It's all about preparedness so that we can do good: We'll do the best we know how to do in order to help, however we can."