Medical Emergency Relief International
| Founded | 1993 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Christopher Besse, Nicholas Mellor and Mark Dalton |
| Type | International charity |
| Focus | Primary Care, Public Health Education, Disaster Relief, International Health, Disease prevention, and Epidemiology |
| Location | |
|
Area served
|
Global |
| Method | Research, Emergency Health Guidelines, Infrastructure |
|
Employees
|
Around 4,000 |
| Mission | Charity |
| Website | www |
|
Formerly called
|
Merlin Board Limited |
Medical Emergency Relief International (Merlin) is a former British international non-governmental health charity which sends medical experts to global emergencies. In July 2013, Merlin merged with Save the Children.
Merlin was founded in 1993 by Dr Christopher Besse, Nicholas Mellor and Mark Dalton to create a British charity to send medical teams into disaster zones and then to prevent disease and help develop local health services. Its first mission was to send a convoy to Bosnia carrying £1 million worth of essential food and medicines. Since then Merlin has grown into a specialist charity aimed at responding to natural disasters and humanitarian emergencies, then staying on to rebuild the capacity of local health services. To date, Merlin has worked in over 40 countries and responded to some of the most serious humanitarian emergencies of recent history. These include the Asian tsunami, Darfur and the cyclone in Burma. Merlin has also responded to the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the flooding in Pakistan.
In July 2013, Merlin merged with Save the Children.
Democratic Republic of Congo: Merlin has been working in DRC since 1997 when it provided emergency assistance to refugees in the east of the country. Since 2002, the charity has been working with communities to rebuild over 100 health facilities, providing drugs and training local health staff, ensuring they have the medicines and the expertise to provide good quality health care. Merlin also supports several hospitals, including Kindu Hospital, the largest in Maniema Province, treating 2,000 patients every month.
Merlin has worked in Kenya since 1998, running voluntary HIV testing and counseling clinics in Turkana for nomadic pastoralists, and a similar project which supports patients receiving anti-retroviral treatment in the Great Rift Valley. Since many people with TB have also contracted HIV and vice versa, Merlin is working with the Kenyan government to encourage HIV-positive people and TB patients to be tested for both infections. In Nyanza in the western highlands of Kenya, Merlin is training locals to provide home-based care for HIV-positive people. After the re-appearance of malaria in Nyanza, Merlin is training community health workers to identify, to reduce and prevent malaria by raising awareness, by distributing bed nets and by spraying people’s homes with insecticide.
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Wikipedia