In 2005, Hurricane Katrina ripped through large areas of the American South, decimating homes, businesses and hospitals, and leaving thousands of people across Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi in despair. Native Mississippian John Roberts, in college at the time, volunteered to help local communities recover. What he saw there inspired him to become an emergency- and …
“Demobilization is infinitely harder than mobilization—hands down,” says US Programs Emergency Response Lead John “JR” Roberts. This might seem surprising. After all, it’s no small feat getting our Emergency Medical Team (EMT) Type 1 field hospital, as well as a crew of volunteers and staff, into a country that’s just experienced a major natural disaster …
When a massive earthquake rocked Haiti on August 14, more than 650,000 people were left in need of emergency humanitarian assistance, while more than half of healthcare facilities were damaged or destroyed. At the request of the Haitian government, International Medical Corps staff and volunteers deployed our Emergency Medical Team (EMT) Fixed Type 1 facility—a …
Dr. Robert Fuller, UConn Health’s chair of emergency medicine, discusses his deployment with International Medical Corps to help Haiti earthquake victims.
Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, has been marked by injustice and catastrophe for decades. Recently, the tiny island nation once again dominated headlines with the shocking assassination of its president on July 7, followed by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck on August 14, leaving around 650,000 people in urgent need of …
True love can be a tangled knot of joy and adversity, with life’s graces and hardships binding us together. For emergency responders Emilie Calvello Hynes and Greg Hynes, it was acute human tragedy—the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake—that brought them together. And for the past 11 years, rushing to the aid of communities devastated by disaster …
As the global COVID-19 vaccine rollout gets underway, humanitarian organizations such as International Medical Corps are using their expertise in community health to mount effective vaccination campaigns in the countries where they work. With our decades of experience managing outbreaks of infectious disease—from helping to eradicate wild polio in Africa, to supporting cholera vaccinations in …
Despite international commitment to end hunger once and for all, hundreds of millions of people still lack sufficient access to proper nutrition. The situation is particularly challenging in developing nations, where more than 13 percent of a countries’ total population go hungry. Food insecurity is driven by various causes; conflict, climate change and slow economies …
International Medical Corps is on standby to deploy disaster response experts to provide lifesaving assistance in hard-hit areas as Hurricane Irma—now the most powerful Atlantic Ocean storm in history—makes its way across the northern Caribbean. Teams have already been established to assess needs and provide lifesaving relief in Haiti and the Dominican Republic should it …
The emergency response to Hurricane Matthew is not Christine’s first stint with International Medical Corps. Following the earthquake in 2010, Christine applied ten years of nursing experience to help International Medical Corps mobile medical teams treat earthquake victims and cholera patients. “I was especially shocked at the number of child victims,” she said, describing how …