S.O.S.
Emergency medical aid departs Direct Relief’s warehouse on Oct. 2, 2024, bound for communities impacted by Hurricane Helene. The shipments were made possible by FedEx. (Maeve Ozimec/Direct Relief)
Reposted for Hurricane Helene relief
Reposted for Hurricane Helene relief
Donate hereA Week In, Hurricane Helene's Impacts Still Reverberate Across Multiple States
By Sofie Blomst, Direct Relief
Relief and recovery efforts continue across the southeastern U.S. and southern Appalachia following Hurricane Helene. The storm, which made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane over Florida's Big Bend region late on September 26, brought devastating winds of up to 140 mph, a life-threatening storm surge that reached 16 feet, and torrential rains, triggering widespread flooding and debris flows and leaving an 800-mile path of destruction.
Preliminary reports indicate the storm's passage has resulted in at least 170 deaths, while hundreds more remain missing. The storm also caused severe damage to critical infrastructure, including houses, roadways, and water systems; disrupted communications and other essential services; and prompted U.S. health officials to declare Public Health Emergencies for Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina.
In addition, as of October 2, more than 1.2 million customers in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia remained without power, causing disruptions to critical health services, including due to the loss of temperature-sensitive medications and vaccines, and putting those reliant on electrically powered medical devices and medicines requiring refrigeration at heightened risk.
In response, Direct Relief has made available $74 million in medicines and medical supplies and $250,000 in financial assistance to community health centers, free and charitable clinics, and other healthcare partners in affected areas.
Direct Relief has staff on the ground in affected states, including Florida and Georgia, and is coordinating closely with state and national associations as well as healthcare providers to assess damages, identify priority needs, and respond to requests for emergency medical aid.
DIRECT RELIEF'S RESPONSE TO HURRICANE HELENE
As of September 30, Direct Relief had dispatched 14 shipments of specifically requested emergency medical aid, including antibiotics, emergency medical backpacks, DTaP vaccines, hygiene kits, oral rehydration salts, over-the-counter products, personal protective equipment, water purification tablets, and medications to manage chronic diseases, for healthcare providers responding to the needs of hard-hit communities in Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee. The shipments include 20 emergency medical backpacks and 150 household hygiene kits for Appalachian Mountain Health, which serves communities in Asheville, NC, which suffered catastrophic flooding and damages due to Hurricane Helene, and the nearby towns of Murphy and Robbinsville.
Additionally, from September 24 to October 1, Direct Relief delivered 42 shipments of essential medicines and supplies to healthcare providers in affected states as part of its Safety Net Support Program; the program seeks to ensure community health centers, free and charitable clinics, and other local healthcare providers across the U.S. have access to ongoing donations of medicines and medical supplies for their low-income and uninsured patients and helps build health facility resilience to respond to and quickly recover from shocks, including those caused by extreme weather and climate events, emergencies, and seasonal demand surges.
Medications shipped to the storm-affected areas regularly include insulin, mental health medications, and blood thinners. People dependent on these medications could face profound consequences without them. People without needed insulin, for example, may have prolonged elevations in blood sugar which can lead to life-threatening diabetic ketoacidosis. Additionally, people who have been stable on antidepressants may face increased risk of mental health crisis, while people without access to needed blood thinners are at increased risk of a stroke. With baseline diabetes, asthma, and hypertension rates exceeding national averages in many of the affected areas, there is a heightened risk for unmanaged chronic diseases to cause sudden health crises.
In addition to the above response efforts, Direct Relief emergency response personnel are conducting site visits with several healthcare partners in Florida. During the week of September 30, Direct Relief staff visited Evara Health, a community health center with 17 locations throughout Florida's Tampa Bay area, and the University of Florida Mobile Outreach Clinic. Following Hurricane Ian's impact on Florida in September 2022, Direct Relief, in partnership with the Florida Association of Community Health Centers, funded the retrofit of a mobile medical unit for Evara Health.
The health center recently deployed the mobile medical unit to provide critical health services for communities in Pinellas County, which faced disruptions of power and water services, extensive flooding, and significant property damages following Hurricane Helene. Similarly, the University of Florida Mobile Outreach Clinic is using its Direct Relief-funded mobile medical unit to offer a weekly rotating clinic in rural communities. Another Direct Relief-supported organization, Cherokee Health Systems, reports deploying their mobile clinic to assess needs and support community response efforts in East Tennessee's Cocke, Hamblen, and Green counties.
HURRICANE PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE CAPACITY
As part of its annual Hurricane Preparedness Program, Direct Relief stages Hurricane Preparedness Packs in hurricane-prone states and territories along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. These packs, containing more than 200 items, are critical to ensuring the continuity of care for as many as 100 patients for 72 hours in the wake of an emergency. As of the June 1 start of the 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season, Direct Relief had prepositioned 30 packs with safety net providers in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia.
In addition, through its ongoing support, Direct Relief maintains an extensive network of 276 health partners in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. During the previous five years, Direct Relief has mobilized more than 28,000 shipments comprising more than $561 million in essential medicines, medical supplies, and medical equipment for these health partners. During emergencies, Direct Relief can quickly tap into this network to identify priority needs and mobilize medical resources for healthcare providers that are already vetted by Direct Relief and well-established and trusted among impacted communities.
This story was originally published by Direct Relief
When the world is in crisis, Direct Relief International is here, there, and everywhere
Written by Hollye Jacobs | Photographs by Sam Frost
Santa Barbara has an uncanny ability to attract some of the most interesting, engaging, passionate, and philanthropic citizens of the world. Thomas Tighe is no exception. As the president and chief executive officer of Direct Relief International— with compassion, grace, and steadfast equanimity—he stewards vital medical and disaster relief support to communities in need in all 50 states and more than 100 hundred countries annually from their distribution center based in Santa Barbara.
How do you prioritize where you are going to deploy Direct Relief assets? With a keen sense of responsibility, empathy, and pragmatism. For 72 years, Direct Relief has prioritized the places and people with the fewest resources, in the greatest need, and with the least access to the type of essential medical resources the organization typically provides. And we assign a higher priority to activities focused on women’s and children’s health, in large part because those areas have not received anywhere close to what makes sense from almost any perspective.
How has COVID-19 impacted your day-to-day operations? The effects of the pandemic have been profound for every person, business, government, and organization, and Direct Relief is no exception. Because much of what’s been needed to respond to the crisis are things that Direct Relief does routinely, it’s required a rapid scaling-up and readjustment to do more, faster, and in more places simultaneously than at any time in our organization’s history.
We did have the benefit of an early signal of just how serious the situation was likely to be based on our experience in China when the outbreak of a novel coronavirus first occurred. Despite having done very little in China historically and zero expectation of being either asked by or permitted to assist in China, we were contacted directly by the largest medical facility in Wuhan and asked for urgent assistance. We were in a position to respond, recognized that containment of the virus was essential, so we moved fast and were able to assist with emergency charters that FedEx arranged to deliver PPE and other items that we stockpile routinely. Having seen how events unfolded there, we were already sprinting when the first cases appeared on the West Coast, and then everywhere else in the United States and in other countries.
What is your most memorable experience with Direct Relief? My time at Direct Relief has left me with a mosaic of experiences—both inspiring and heartbreaking—that are burned into my memory. Those that surface most often are not associated with a major event like the pandemic we’re in or being in the mountains of Nepal when an 8.0 quake happened. They are variations of our work bringing me into contact with a person whose actions or entire life reflect such a pure dedication or selflessness that is far beyond what I could ever express in words. Heroes abound, and they never think of themselves as heroic. I think everyone on the Direct Relief team has their own version of these experiences, which is a rare privilege in life.
How did your personal experiences with natural disasters (i.e., the debris flow of 2018) impact your professional decision-making? It was a sharp reminder to me that every disaster is not only a local event but a very personal one to everyone affected by it. The human dimension is much more complex and far less visible than the necessary practical actions that need to be taken after a tragedy like the debris flow, and both take a long time to deal with and bounce back from.
We are a support organization, so the critical decision at work is always where the support is aimed. In Montecito, it was easy to plug in immediately with our local first responders because we know them and also know that they’re among the most skilled and talented in the world. But we also saw how important the start-up groups were, with the Santa Barbara Bucket Brigade being a perfect example of inviting participation, organizing in a thoughtful practical way, and just showing through their words and action empathy and personal concern for their neighbors.
When going through a tough time, knowing that someone is pulling for you and cares about you helps you get up in the morning. Direct Relief always tries to do that, and we did everything we could think of to help in our hometown.
What are your biggest challenges? Direct Relief faces the same challenges every nonprofit organization that relies entirely on private support confronts in economically uncertain times. The organization is assiduously apolitical and always has been, which presents some challenges during what I think is fair to say is a time of heightened political intensity. I think huge opportunities exist to address vexing problems that Direct Relief focuses on—access to health services for people who just can’t afford what’s needed, anticipating and responding to large-scale emergencies—by simply focusing on the issues and inviting the participation of everyone who has an important piece of the puzzle.
When I was growing up, “public service” meant “working for the government.” Things are much different now. Working for the government may not seem as attractive, but the underlying idea of public service—doing things that help our neighbors who need it, preserving our natural environment—are pretty basic, good, important things. Those things can be done, including at scale as we’ve seen at Direct Relief. So, the big challenge that we see as an enormous opportunity is to harness all the talent and tools and resources that exist, but in a different way that invites folks to participate.
How did your experience with the Peace Corps influence your work at Direct Relief? Being a Peace Corps volunteer gave me such a different view of everyday life in a place so different from everything I knew. I was there to work, but like every other Peace Corps volunteer ever, I learned that I’d fail miserably unless I understood the culture, language, and customs so I could communicate and navigate in a way that made sense where I was, not where I came from. That experience has been particularly helpful at Direct Relief particularly with regard to scale, embracing technology to do things differently, and making sure that any money being spent was advancing the mission in the most efficient way possible. •
