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UNICEF speeds aid to Turkey's children

Over the weekend, UNICEF delivered about $500,000 worth of relief items, including:

• 100 large tents
• 565 wood-burning stoves
• 6,500 blankets and sleeping bags
• 10 generators

UNICEF had staff on the ground within two hours and a rapid assessment mission is underway in the affected areas. Some of the UNICEF supplies are being used to set up emergency medical centres.

"The first priority is to meet emergency needs, and that's where we are focusing resources right now," said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy. "But it is heartbreaking, really heartbreaking, to imagine the emotional trauma that the children of these quakes must be going through. That's where our energies will be focused in the long-term."

Friday's tremor came 10 weeks after the devastating August 17 earthquake that affected more than 1 million people and generated numerous sizeable aftershocks.

"You don't get used to it after the second or third time," said Ingrid Leth, a UNICEF child psychologist. "This kind of trauma can really be worse the second time around because it creates an almost constant tension about what might happen next. In that sense this quake is especially tragic."

UNICEF's ability to respond so quickly to Friday's quake is due, in large part, to its ongoing recovery program in the earlier quake zone. Responding to the earlier quake, UNICEF helped develop local capacity to respond to such disasters. Over the weekend, for instance, local teams that UNICEF had trained back in September in tent-assembly were able to move in within hours to set up tents as medical facilities.

UNICEF's long-term relief effort in the Turkey quake zones is focused on restoring schools and helping children and their families address lingering psychosocial impacts. The keystone of that effort has been a national training program that has reached nearly 6,000 teachers, providing them with the ability to recognize and address many of the psychosocial issues among youngsters in the classroom. For many children, classrooms are the heated tents that have been provided by UNICEF.

UNICEF has a team of 26 working in the newly-affected quake areas, in addition to staff in the previous quake zone. The group includes specialists in education, psychosocial counselling, water & sanitation, and health.

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