After the disaster of February 6th, we are all experiencing a process where the disaster accelerated our work, diversified our activities, and tested our networking skills.

10 minutes after the earthquake we started to reach out to our network friends in the region. Our priority and our cause as a nation has been to provide all the support we can to earthquake victims in an ageless, genderless and raceless way.

Since then we work through three main channels to address the needs on a local level:

1. Monitoring and answering the ad-hoc demands reaching the Association through the network of municipal officials, social services officials and volunteers we have in the disaster area.

2. Coordinating our with the crisis desk established by the NGO Disaster Platform (Afet Platformu) through our representative at the desk.

3. To activate a network of healthcare professionals from both our country and the world, in addition to physicians and other healthcare professionals among our members and volunteers to provided relief, resources and contacts to those in urgent need in the disaster area.

Thanks to our existing networks, we organize vehicles from Elazig to Malatya starting from the first day of the earthquake, and we started to dispatch many urgent needs from adult diapers to wheelchairs. We tried to address the need for power generators and tents. We also provided network and support sharing with NGOs working for translators and children. On the other hand, we are trying to support earthquake victims’ efforts to find a safe place outside of the disaster area.

As part of our emergency relief efforts we provided a 24-unit mobile toilet to be installed in the “tent city” near Adıyaman Training and Research Hospital.

65+ in earthquake

Although we will continue to operate through the channels listed above for urgent needs, we are now starting our medium and long-term studies to focus on our main field of activity and expertise.

We have prepared and distributed our brochure in four languages, in which we draw attention to the points to be considered in contacting and assisting the elderly in the earthquake area. We will increase and continue such educational activities, including for the elderly and their relatives outside the earthquake zone.

With a small-grant funding from the Turkish Mozaik Foundation and Support Foundation for Civil Society we organized an on-site needs assessment visit by our core team of two physicians and two senior nurses. They visited Adıyaman, Malatya and Kahramanmaraş in the disaster area and met local officials, social care providers and families. They provided medical and care supplies, including wheelchairs to distribute during the visit.

Our aim is to identify the people and institutions we can cooperate and partner with locally. We are planning specialized training to care providers and local officials working with the elderly disaster victims and their families. Furthermore, we will try to reach out to elderly earthquake victims and their relatives in the new settlements in places where they were evacuated to.