For the first time since the historic World War II, humanity has come face to face with a crisis that has had such a sudden impact on the whole world in 2020. The climate crisis has also harshly called attention to itself while wars, conflicts, disasters, famine, and poverty continue. We’ve watched the rapid melting of glaciers on one side of the world and unstoppable fires on the other. A new pandemic has deeply affected all of us together with all of these. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives. While many remain unemployed, school closures have impacted almost all children around the world. However, economically weak countries have suffered the most from this crisis. The number of those dying from starvation has almost doubled. Extreme poverty rates have risen again for the first time in 22 years. Medical resources being concentrated on pandemic measures has led to an increase in mortality rates caused by diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.
All these crises have made 2020 one of the years of greatest need of humanitarian aid. The pandemic has also affected humanitarian work: International travel has been restricted for humanitarian workers, and resources remain insufficient due to increased needs. Nevertheless, the studies that have been able to be carried out despite all these difficulties did prevent the scenario from becoming even more frightening.
Together with many institutions, Turkey has become an important actor for aid efforts in the world this year and has not hesitated to extend its hand to countries in need.
As Doctors Worldwide Turkey, we have been working in war, disaster and conflict zones for many years. One of the most important things to be aware of that working in these environments has taught us is that the humanitarian aid activities carried out by transporting human resources and products between countries is able to be quickly affected by any crisis and may become unfeasible. Access to these areas can become restricted when a crisis intensifies and help is needed the most. This awareness has pushed us to strengthen local resources and has become an integral part of our humanitarian efforts. We have established clinics in many parts of the world, put local healthcare professionals to work, and developed strong collaborations. Throughout this period when conveying our healthcare teams and aid materials from Turkey has been impossible due to the pandemic, hundreds of our local staff and diligently maintained our services, trying to respond to growing health necessities in areas of need. We’ve added our efforts on COVID-19 to our routine services and been involved as supporters of the COVID-19 measures of local Ministries of Health in some regions.
What all these efforts have made possible has been more and more support for our people through sensitivity that has not decreased despite the difficult people but on the contrary has increased. We received messages from our citizens in quarantine saying that they would reach out to the needy as soon as they leave the hospital while delivering our support kits to the pandemic services of hospitals in Turkey. Our people have neither forgotten their neighbors nor allowed distance to come between them and those in need in Yemen, Gaza, Somalia, and Kyrgyzstan. We are grateful…
The data we’ve obtained so far have already given many signs that the year ahead will not be easy. All of us will have to take responsibility in order to not watch the rates of hunger-, poverty-, and infectious disease-based deaths and absenteeism from school increase again. We believe that goodness will continue to be our touch as we overcome all these difficulties.