MERCY Malaysia Intends to Provide Primary Healthcare on a Boat for Mentawai Tsunami Survivors

29 October 2010 – The MERCY Malaysia team is looking to provide the primary healthcare on a boat -along the west coast of Pagai Utara and Pagai Selatan- to attend to the medical needs of the survivors of the tsunami which hit the Mentawai Islands earlier this week.

Led by MERCY Malaysia Executive Council Member, Norazam Ab Samah and accompanied by MERCY Malaysia Medical Coordinator, Sister Che Tah Hanafi, the team arrived in Padang yesterday morning at 8AM.

“After attending the coordination meetings, we are looking at setting up a boat to provide primary healthcare services and we are procuring the necessary medications for this purpose,” said Norazam.

“We have also engaged Malaysian medical students from University of Andalas in Padang to join our team, and we are arranging to travel to the Mentawai Islands. Hopefully, we’ll get there sometime today,” he added.

Anticipating more needs on the ground, MERCY Malaysia will be deploying another team on Sunday, 31 October 2010 to provide medical relief, tentatively for two weeks.

The second team will consist of a General Practitioner (Dr. Mohammad Iqbal bin Omar), a Medical Assistant (Chee Fook Wah), and two logisticians (Che Mahmud bin Mohd Nordin and Khairul Masnizan bin Abdullah).

Concerned Malaysians can donate to the MERCY Malaysia Humanitarian Fund through MAYBANK, account number 5621-7950-4126 or CIMB Bank, account number 1424-000-6561053.

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About MERCY Malaysia 

MERCY Malaysia is a non‐profit organisation focusing on providing medical relief, sustainable health-related development and risk reduction activities for vulnerable communities in both crisis and non-crisis situations. MERCY Malaysia recognises the value of working with partners and volunteers as well as providing opportunities for individuals to serve with professionalism. We uphold the Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief and hold ourselves accountable to our donors and beneficiaries. As a non‐profit organisation, MERCY Malaysia relies solely on funding and donations from organisations and generous individuals to continue our services to provide humanitarian assistance to our beneficiaries.

Important Note to Media: Usage of Wordmark MERCY Malaysia

In order to avoid confusion with other organisation(s) that uses “Mercy” as the organisation’s name or part of the organisation’s name, please take note that in addressing the name of our organisation, the wordmark for MERCY Malaysia is with capitalised “MERCY”, followed by the word “Malaysia”. When describing the organisation, the term “MERCY Malaysia” must always be used in full, and should not be partially referred to as “MERCY”, or “Mercy”. Thank you for your cooperation.

 

For further information, kindly contact:

Mas Elati Samani, Head of Communications and Strategic Engagement, MERCY Malaysia

Level 2, Podium Block, City Point, Kompleks Dayabumi, Jalan Sultan Hishamuddin, 50050 KL.

T: 6-03-2273 3999, F: 6-03-2272 3812, E: mas@mercy.org.my W: www.mercy.org.my