JDC: Emergency Team in Kathmandu; Preparing Aid Shipment From NYC

NEW YORK, NY

As rescue efforts continue in Nepal, the disaster relief team of the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) was working on the ground in the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu supporting and coordinating with partners to ensure life-saving medical care and relief supplies, assessing emerging needs in remote locations, identifying new local partners and long-term recovery directions, and readying for the arrival of more medical and humanitarian supplies shipped from New York City.

Mike Attinson, JDC’s veteran disaster response expert and emergency field medic, said a visit to JDC’s partners at the IDF field hospital — where JDC supplied medical items, including two critically needed neonatal incubators — was particularly powerful. As its team is on the ground in Nepal, JDC is concurrently working with the Afya Foundation in Yonkers, New York, to pack and ship critically needed humanitarian and medical supplies to a Kathmandu hospital. This shipment is being coordinated through the Nepalese Consulate in New York City.

Later this week, Attinson and the JDC disaster response team will visit some of the remote towns and villages hardest hit by the April 25 earthquake, which impacted eight million people and killed more than 5,000.

JDC has provided immediate relief and long-term assistance to victims of natural and man-made disasters around the globe, including in the Philippines, Haiti, Japan, and South Asia after the Indian Ocean Tsunami, and continues to operate programs designed to rebuild infrastructure and community life in disaster-stricken regions.

JDC’s disaster relief programs are funded by special appeals of the Jewish Federations of North America and tens of thousands of individual donors to JDC. JDC coordinates its relief activities with the U.S. Department of State, USAID, Interaction, the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Israeli agencies, and the U.N. coordination mechanism OCHA.

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