Soaring food, fuel costs

challenge relief efforts

  TIGARD — The same rising food and fuel costs delivering an economic punch to Northwest households are threatening the lives of the world’s neediest families.
   Spiking energy prices, widespread droughts and an increasing global food shortage are impacting impoverished communities in desperate need of aid, and the global relief agencies charged with helping them.
  “Without food, the struggle to help children and their families maintain basic health is nearly impossible,” said Dr. Wendy Dyment, emergency health specialist at the Tigard-based Christian relief agency Medical Teams International. Dyment, who recently returned from Darfur, Sudan, says food scarcity leads to increased malnutrition rates, adversely affects maternal health and undermines the body’s ability to fight infection. All are conditions that Dyment saw in Sudan.
  “The situation in Darfur continues to worsen,” added Dyment. “Even more children are dying this year than last, so urgent and expanded medical and nutritional assistance is needed immediately.”
   As Medical Teams International ramps up to meet the health emergencies triggered by soaring malnutrition and hunger, the agency also faces an internal challenge. In the last 12 months, shipping and trucking fees to ship donated medical supplies have risen 40 percent.
   Last month, one of Medical Teams International’s longtime grant partners suspended all humanitarian aid shipments due to skyrocketing transportation costs. This action now prevents Medical Teams International from sending supplies to the Eurasia region.
   Medical Teams International — which dispatches more than 500 volunteers and $125 million in supplies during an average year — is facing a challenge to meet increased needs while weathering a U.S. downturn.
   In April 2007, the average cost to send a 40-foot container to the Democratic Republic of Congo was $9,600. That price tag is now $17,400.
  “We can’t let the rising prices stop us from delivering the care that is so desperately needed,” said Dyment.
   For more information go to www.medicalteams.org or phone 1-800-959-4325.