Published: 19 December 2008
The first of seven planned Red Cross emergency response units (ERUs) has arrived in Zimbabwe, marking a massive scaling up of Red Cross Red Crescent action to address the critical cholera situation.
An ERU is a specialised team that is trained and equipped for emergency humanitarian scenarios. It can be mobilised and dispatched with optimum speed and is fully self-sufficient.
Typically, ERUs are only deployed in the most critical humanitarian situations such as the Indian Ocean tsunami and Pakistan earthquake in October 2005. The most recent deployment resulted from the destruction caused when successive hurricanes battered Haiti and the Caribbean.
“We are confident that with these resources in place we can play an important role in preventing an escalation of the situation and more loss of life,” said John Fleming, IFRC’s Southern Africa Zone Health and Care Coordinator.
The first team to arrive specialises in providing improved access to clean water. This ERU is tasked to improve sanitation and hygiene and arrived on a charter flight into Harare, sent by the German and Austrian Red Cross.
The seven planned Red Cross ERUs are likely to include three basic health care ERUs, two mass sanitation ERUs and two water and sanitation ERUs. The remaining six ERUs are expected to arrive over the coming days.
South Africa, Angola, Botswana and Mozambique have also seen an increase in cholera cases recently, a worrying situation that is being closely monitored by the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). The number of cases in Angola is very high, with over 10,000 cases in twelve of the country’s eighteen provinces reported so far this year.
Additional information about the seven ERUs for Zimbabwe...