India Oxygen Crisis Appeal

to urgently supply Oxygen Concentrators

Oxygen Concentrator

As restrictions ease in the UK in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, the situation in India grows more critical by the day and there are heart-breaking reports of people struggling to access medical care. The problem has been exacerbated by an acute shortage of oxygen including cylinders, which is such a crucial part of the treatment. Bad enough in the cities but in the impoverished rural areas it is dire and people are dying unnecessarily through a lack of medical care and access to oxygen.

Along with Disaster Aid India and other country partners from Disaster Aid International, we are launching an urgent appeal to help the people of India and in particular those in the Palghar and Wada District near Mumbai.

We have identified that providing Oxygen Concentrator Machines would help more people to gain access to life saving oxygen.

This is a similar philosophy to previous projects supplying water filters, which instead of using unsustainable bottled water, turn freely available sources into safe drinking water. In this case, instead of waiting for finite or unreliable sources of oxygen cylinders; an Oxygen Concentrator removes the nitrogen from the air around us, leaving an oxygen enriched medically approved gas. This is a very portable, sustainable solution, giving infinite supplies of oxygen which could continue to be useful even after Covid-19.

We feel this is the best way to give ‘a hand up, not a handout’ and save lives and as always, would be grateful for your continued support and donations.

Welcome to Disaster Aid UK & Ireland

Disaster Aid UK & Ireland is one of the founding partners of Disaster Aid International (DAI). DAI is an international organisation, involving Rotary Clubs around the world, with the mission to:

Respond to disasters with the supply of humanitarian aid to the affected communities and/or individuals.
Work in partnership on humanitarian projects funded by other organisations including Rotary clubs and Rotary districts.

In contrast to many other disaster-response groups, our aim is also to provide an infrastructure that allows affected communities to regain their normal lives.

If your organisation, club or group are meeting online during the pandemic, we would be very happy speak about Disaster Aid UK & Ireland to a meeting.

Please contact chairman Pam Joyce giving details of the time and date of the meeting.

Contact Pam

BEIRUT DISASTER APPEAL
is now CLOSED

We are now pleased to confirm that with the help of the Rotary Club of Chtaura-Bekaa Gate, Lebanon we have been able to finance the replacement of 15 front apartment doors and frames damaged in the explosion, and also supplying some basic floor covering to the main living area in some flats where the floor surface had been damaged and was too expensive to repair. To enable this, we used all the donated money for the appeal and added a donation from our reserves.
Apartments selected for this project are occupied by ‘poor to below average income families’ who would otherwise have been unable to effect the repairs.

This is an example of how important it is for us to receive regular donations, even when there is no particular appeal, as often there are times we can also give valued disaster support to a situation that does not warrant a full appeal.

In the absence of a specific appeal at this time, any donations will be gratefully received and will go to our reserves to help give “a hand up, not a handout” at future disasters.

View video for the role of DARTS

Deployments

In the event of a deployment, Disaster Aid International will send out fully trained Disaster Aid Response Team volunteers (DARTS) to the affected country in order to:

Conduct an assessment of the disaster and local needs;
Coordinate with relevant governments, aid agencies and the affected communities to ensure that aid is deployed where most effective;
Manage the effective distribution of equipment, tents etc. to the sites of deployment;
Train members of the local community so that they can be involved in the distribution and deployment of the equipment, tents etc.;
Work to ensure that deployments are designed to support longer term sustainability;
Monitor and evaluate our deployments to ensure that both the products we are deploying as well as the means of distribution are relevant, effective and reach out to the most vulnerable.

MORE INFORMATION

How you can help - Donate

We have found that people can be incredibly generous once a disaster has struck. In such cases, we usually create a special fund raising campaign and funds raised by this campaign will be used for the specific disaster concerned. However, a real challenge for all disaster aid organisations, ourselves included, is that we need to be able to raise funds in preparation for future disasters.

This enables us to pre-position the stock of aid products in various parts of the world so we can respond quickly to the very urgent need when disaster next strikes. (donations received now are going to restocking tents and other aid products for future disaster aid work)

How you can help - Presenting

We have a full programme of presentations, demonstrations and exhibitions suitable for Rotary clubs, professional organisations, schools etc. We are very interested in both extending our regional cover and increasing our profile with local and national businesses and also younger people by working with schools, colleges and youth groups.

The more people we have on the ground, the more we can do ! We are therefore interested in hearing from anyone who in is interested in becoming an Ambassador for us. We provide a day of training for new Ambassadors and also an experienced ambassador to co-present during the first one or two events.