Red Cross secretary-general wins disaster award

Fernanda Teixeira, secretary-general of the Mozambique Red Cross (MRC) has been recognised by the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) for her personal role in disaster mitigation in a country that has lurched through war, floods, cyclones and drought. The ISDR, a UN inter-agency task force and secretariat, noted that Mozambicans were better prepared than expected for the 2000 and 2001 floods and in recognition of this, she was last week awarded a certificate of distinction from the annual Sasakawa Award for Disaster Reduction. The award promotes humanitarian efforts to assist vulnerable communities become more resilient to the impact of natural disasters. Fernanda Teixeira is a softly spoken woman with inquiring eyes and a ready smile. As a Mozambican, she has had a lifetime of first-hand experience of the tragedies her country has lived through. "We were like the government's parallel emergency department," Teixeira said of the MRC. When peace finally came to Mozambique in 1992 after 16-years of civil war, the government started taking over emergency functions and the MRC started scaling down, selling equipment they no longer needed and renting their warehouse to the US embassy. "We decided to restructure and decided that disaster awareness and avoidance needed to be a part of all Red Cross programmes - even if they were very small programmes," Teixeira told IRIN. The organisation set up training programmes to strengthen local communities' response to disaster and, Teixeira said, the first programme in the southern province of Gaza had just been completed when cyclone-induced floods hit the country in 2000. The scale of the emergency, which saw hundreds of thousands of people lose their homes and their crops, overwhelmed the emergency services and forced them to realise that more work had to be done in disaster preparedness and mitigation. Teixeira said the MRC had been given a donation of boats so that volunteers could power across the flooded fields in search of victims, but nobody knew how to use them. Because they were renting their warehouse to the US embassy to supplement their income, they did not have anywhere to store their emergency supplies. Volunteers worked long hours with no pay while the South African National Defence Force did "an amazing job" delivering food supplies to cut-off communities and rescuing people. At that time the impoverished Mozambique Defence Force, which had scaled down for peace, only had one rescue helicopter for the whole country. At the same time, NGOs and international Red Cross country representatives descended on Mozambique, each with their own approach. "It was hell coordinating everyone," Teixeira said. "Those floods opened our eyes." Since then, the MRC has stepped up its disaster strategy with a five-year plan and an exhaustive list of practical measures, devised and implemented in close consultation with communities affected by the disasters. By the time the 2001 floods arrived, they were better prepared. The government had established the National Disaster Management Institute, and had a disaster policy. Volunteers knew how to use the once-baffling boats, they were trained in the logistics of pitching tents and setting up water supplies and there was a pre-agreed list of tasks for the NGOs and the MRC. The floods, though serious, made less of an impact. Teixeira said the success of the MRC's role in the floods, and its own Danish Red Cross-funded strategy, came down to teamwork among the 234 permanent staff, close community involvement through locally appointed disaster committees, and the tireless efforts of over 4,000 volunteers who work for no pay - just the occasional free T-shirt. The volunteers have helped prepare risk maps noting the areas prone to flooding and marking off where people flee to when the waters rise. Contingency food stocks have been put in place in flood and cyclone-safe storage facilities before the rainy season and the volunteers tap into community memory to glean information on past disasters. They have used this information to draw maps of where previous droughts, cyclones and floods occurred and how the community responded. They have also noted the whereabouts of the faraway temporary shelters the communities use during times of intensive farming and harvesting and see if these can be used as shelters during disasters. For droughts the volunteers disseminate information on the government's policy to consider drought-resistant crops. For cyclones, communities are taught to understand the warning colour code of pre-cyclone flares released by volunteers. The MRC researches which diseases, like cholera, have cropped up during the past disasters and try to prevent these through education. "For some reason, there's always a measles epidemic when there's a drought so there was a vaccination programme with the ministry of health," Teixeira said. Besides, the MRC, the World Food Programme, the UN Children's Fund and the World Health Organisation all work closely to provide a complete package, along with corresponding government departments. Teixeira paid tribute to her fellow countrymen's resilience through disaster. "I really admire the Mozambican population for always being so ready to start again." On her award, she insisted: "They were not all my ideas, it was teamwork. This is not my own, it is for my colleagues".