So many disasters stretch Northwest Medical Teams thin

    TIGARD — Northwest Medical Teams, the Christian humanitarian or-ganization specializing in disasters, has been stretched thin as disaster upon disaster has mounted on the world scene in recent weeks.
    The small aid agency dispatched 90 volunteers in September alone, a record for the 26-year-old organization. Dealing with disasters in seven areas from the Gulf Coast to Guatemala is another record.
    Bas Vanderzalm, the agency’s president, told The Oregonian that his organization is pacing itself in a marathon that consists of a whole bunch of sprints. He noted that the disasters are opportunities to show compassion to the needy, and you can’t space them out and schedule them — they just happen.
    The agency acquired a new 35.000 square-foot warehouse two weeks before last December’s tusnami hit Southeast Asia. The huge building, expected to handle expansion forfive years, quickly overflowed with medical supplies. A year before the move, Northwest Medical Teams shipped $60 million in supplies. By last June 30, $213 million in supplies had been shipped.
    During the same period, the agency dispatched a record number of volunteer teams —183, or more than three a week. But Vanderzalm said effectiveness is the agency’s primary goal, not growth.
    More recently, as Northwest Medical Teams sought to send a team to assist victims of the deadly earthquake in Pakistan, funds were drying out as donations trickled in. It received $34,378 for earthquake response as compared to $4.3 million for the hurricanes and $12.5 million for the tsunami.
    The agency has shipped $2.5 million in antibiotics, pain medication, and bandages to Pakistan, but sending a team there is difficult. Its 200 disaster-ready pool of doctors, nurses, and other medical workers is growing less as these people run short of vacation time.
    In addition, partner organizations in Pakistan, taxed by the worsening disaster, are not ready to host a Christian medical team because of complications in a Muslim nation such as anti-American feelings and reception of female medical practitioners.
    There’s also a short supply of interpreters, and lack of warm shelters — only tents exist as of now— with the arrival of severe winter weather conditions in the Himalayas.
     But Northwest Medical has surmounted higher obstacles in the past, and was forming a team, including two doctors and a nurse to send to the earthquake area to assist survivors who lack food, water, and shelter.
Vanderzalm said he wanted to go “full-bore” into the Pakistani earthquake situation and was champing at the bit.
    For information on donating to Northwest Medical Teams International, go to www.nwmedicalteams.org or phone 1-800-959-HEAL.