Programs

DISASTER RELIEF SERVICES

According to the statistics released by the United Nations, over 25,000 people worldwide die every day as a result of disasters such as famine and malnutrition. Add to that number, 12 to 16 other major natural disasters that occur every year, which also take thousands of lives, and you begin to understand and appreciate the important life-saving efforts of Mercy Airlift.

No one can predict when a major earthquake will strike a heavily populated area of the world, leaving thousands dead or homeless without the ability to recover their own. The economic loss often runs into the billions of dollars. Droughts, tsunamis, famines, fires, floods, explosions, and hurricanes all cause a tremendous loss of life and the ruin of already fragile economics.

Mercy Airlift has provided humanitarian assistance to disaster sites in over 60 countries, transporting millions of pounds of food, medical services and supplies, reconstruction supplies and equipment valued in the tens of thousands of dollars.

With our many years of disaster relief experience, we recognize that securing air transportation is the most critical problem in providing disaster relief and recovery services. For this reason, Mercy Airlift provides its own air transportation. This enables us to immediately respond to disaster areas and ensure direct onsite distribution of materials and supplies to the people in need.

We are the only humanitarian organization that provides complete logistical services and air transportation to other humanitarian organizations throughout the world. This dedicated service enables the quickest response for our own relief teams as well as other organizations that need prompt and efficient transportation.

Through our corporate sponsors, partners, individual supporters and volunteers, we have been able to source, secure, and replenish emergency supplies. These include food, medicine, temporary and permanent housing, as well as reconstruction equipment, educational, and agricultural supplies. The items and supplies are inventoried and maintained in our warehouse facilities, where they are ready to be quickly loaded aboard aircraft and transported to disaster and recovery sites as required.

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THE CRYSTAL PROJECT

Mercy Airlift has implemented a humanitarian program in coordination with the Vision 2020 initiative established by the World Health Organization. This program is called the Crystal Project, and its goal is to eradicate the most common human ailment - cataract blindness.

Did you know . . .

• 42% of the world blindness (i.e. over 95 million people) is due to cataracts, which can be completely prevented.
• Annual estimates indicate that at least 5 million additional people are affected by cataract-blindness - every 6 seconds another person in the world turns totally blind and cannot walk unaided.
• Cataracts are the clouding of the lens in our eye. It is predominantly an age-related process that develops slowly over several years. Every human who lives long enough is prone to be afflicted by some level of cataract blindness. However, cataracts are easily corrected through a 15-minute outpatient procedure that involves the surgical replacement of the clouded lens with an artificial lens.
• In wealthy nations, cataract blindness is almost nonexistent due to the ample availability of cataract surgery and lens implants, administered as soon as the clouding begins to impair the vision of patients.
• Most cataract blindness occurs in developing countries due to the unavailability of the surgical procedure, the shortatge of trained surgeons, and the lack of affordable lens implants.
• Left untreated, the cataract-blind population worldwide will double by the year 2020.
• To control the incidence of cataracts before the year 2020, a staggering 400 million cataract procedures will need to be performed.

There is a solution - The Crystal Project

Initiated by Mercy Airlift, the Crystal Project is a humanitarian program that aims to restore sight to millions of cataract patients in underprivileged countries. It combines synergistically:

• A surgical procedure validated by the World Health Organization that addresses the needs of the harsh environment of local medical communities
• A distance-learning platform and a certification process, both under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
• Hands-on surgical sessions in mobile surgical units aboard Mercy Airlift's converted aircraft, as well as follow-up missions led by Mercy Airlift medical staff and partners dedicated to the cause of world blindness
• A unique partnership with medical manufacturers for the affordable supply of lens implants and other medical consumables and equipment

MEDICAL EQUIPTMENT DISTRIBUTION

Additionally, other medical relief organizations travel to these countries in attempts to provide healthcare. They quickly discover, however, that the limited amount of medical equipment and supplies are inadequate and fall short of meeting the basic needs of the population.

When we travel to other countries, we see the desperate conditions in which some medical facilities and hospitals have deteriorated. In overwhelming numbers, many clinics and hospitals cannot even provide basic healthcare, much less complicated procedures. Many communities and villages have built healthcare facilities and doctors who will visit them, but they lack the proper equipment to provide for the local population.

Meanwhile, the United States has a tremendous surplus of medical and surgical equipment. When the slightly used or new equipment is no longer needed, it is oftentimes removed from service and discarded. However, these products are exactly the type desperately needed in developing countries.

Mercy Airlift recognized the solution to the dilemma and developed an ongoing Medical Equipment Distribution Program with medical clinics, hospitals, and medical schools throughout the United States. The mission is to provide excess or surplus equipment to some of the poorest and underdeveloped countries of the world. We have also established relationships with manufacturers of medical equipment and pharmaceutical companies to assist us in procuring supplies and medicines when needed.

Numerous hospitals and clinics in Central and South America, as well as hospitals in Africa and Central Asia, depend on the arrival of various types of equipment and supplies from Mercy Airlift. Through our corporate donors we are able to continue the delivery of specific types of equipment requested by these hospitals and clinics.

Mercy Airlift operates a fleet of trucks, which are sent out across the United States on a regular basis to pick up equipment from hospitals, clinics, schools, and manufacturers, and transport it to our Mercy Airlift facilities. At our facilities the donated equipment receives a complete conditional inspection and is inventoried prior to the shipment being made to one of the clinics and hospitals we support in developing nations.


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MEDICAL RESPONSE TEAMS

Over the years, Mercy Airlift Medical Response Teams have attended to thousands of victims of disasters, as well as those who have suffered from illness or physical problems. Some of these problems include cholera, diphtheria, birth defects, malnutrition, and heart, eyes, and intestinal infirmities, many of which are life-threatening illnesses. The near majority of these cases are caused by the lack of adequate healthcare systems and personal hygiene education.

It is common in the smaller towns and villages of underdeveloped countries not to find any medical personnel available to them on a frequent basis. Residents must travel from one village to the next in order to locate medical assistance, yet often it is too late. Even the medical personnel who travel to these remote areas do not always have the proper equipment or medicines. They also do not have the ability to transport their patients to a treatment center, which can address the illness or injuries. This is where Mercy Airlift has been able to provide Mobile Medical Centers. On a scheduled basis, we have our medical teams staffing and stocking these centers with adequate supplies and medicines to ensure that proper treatment is made available.

Mercy Airlift transports patients, on an ongoing basis, from remote areas of particular countries to medical facilities where the patient can receive immediate and proper care. We also transport patients from country to country in order to have proper medical services and procedures performed in life threatening circumstances.

These services are provided by our own medical personnel as well as the many volunteer medical personnel, who give of their time and talents in the effort to ease the pain and suffering of less fortunate people in all parts of the world.

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MERCY KITS

We've all listened to children telling us of the toys they want; of adults wishing they had a newer car or bigger house. However, millions of families throughout the world, living in dire poverty, are without even the bare essentials of basic survival.

As a result, Mercy Airlift has developed "Mercy Kits" which meet the basic needs of families left with nothing, with no one to turn to for help. The kits are distributed free of charge to disaster victims, orphanages, and those who continuously suffer in abject poverty. Kit ingredients are purchased and then packaged by volunteers, social clubs, service organizations, schools and churches. They are then collected for sorting in our facilities and distributed to the needy.
Learn More About Mercy Kits

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SOUTH AFRICA FAMINE

Fourteen million people are at risk of starvation in southern Africa, as a prolonged drought has parched the land that has traditionally met the needs of the people in southern Africa. Livestock have died, water supplies have dried up, and thousands of farmers have had moved closer to the cities, turning many of them into refugees in their own countries. Thousands of those migrating to the cities never made it.

With the shortfall of corps, mainly caused by this extended drought, fourteen million people are dependent on sustained food assistance. That means they have no way of feeding themselves, and they must rely on donors from around the world to help in distributing food to them, as this crisis could turn catastrophic.

It is the worst drought since 1991 and 1992. If the rains don’t arrive in the next 60 days, the drought may take thousands of more lives, as was the situation in 1985 and 1986 when thousands of lives were lost in “The Great Drought of Africa”.

In 1986 and 1987, Mercy Airlift flew millions of pounds of food, as well as medical supplies to remote villages where the food and supplies were distributed directly to the affected people, and as the Director of Relief for the government of Ethiopia stated, "Tens of thousands would have been lost, were it not for Mercy Airlift”.

Just $40.00 will feed two families for one month. It’s such a relatively small amount to save lives. Please partner with us, and do what you can. For the $40.00 per month, each of us individually can make for these families, the difference between life and starvation. If we don’t, then who?

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FLOOD RELIEF TO INDIA

India has been inundated with heavy rains resulting in the heaviest flooding in over 22 years. An estimated 600 people have died in the floods which have affected 17 million people, leaving thousands of people homeless and helpless, having lost all of their belongings. "The situation is still quite critical. It's a huge disaster," Fernando Soares, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies told the Reuters New Agency.

Outbreaks of water-borne diseases are expected to increase. Halogen tablets used to treat contaminated water and medical teams are being sent throughout the region to minimize, as much as possible, diseases related to contaminated water. Food supplies as well as medicines, medical supplies, tents and other similar supplies are continuously being obtained for transport to this area.

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ETHIOPIA FAMINE

Ethiopia is experiencing a continued drought that threatens millions of lives. The Ethiopian government has again requested that Mercy Airlift assist in providing food supplies to Ethiopia, where an estimated 6 million people are at risk of starving.

A multi-year drought has forced these people to consume their own grain and then because the soil is too dry to grow anything, to sell their cattle, farm tools and plows to buy food. When there is no other ability to feed themselves the families walk for days and weeks to Feeding Stations where they can receive food and sustenance. Because of the remote locations of the starving people and the Feeding Stations established to feed them and because of the condition of the roads to these sites, it is not possible to transport food supplies to these Feeding Stations by surface transportation. Mercy Airlift is continuing its efforts to alleviate this problem.

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MEXICO MEDICAL FLIGHTS

Mercy Airlift continues to operate Medical Airlift flights to rural and remote villages in Mexico where medical supplies are in short supply or are simply not available.

Several times each year Mercy Airlift dispatches special Medical Aircraft to rural and remote areas of Mexico. These flights transport Doctors, Nurses and Specialty Medical Personnel to augment the services available at the government clinics and hospitals. They also transport medicines and medical equipment that would not otherwise be available to small clinics and their patients.

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