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World Vision convoy to deliver aid kits to more than 3,000 Iraqi families
June 3, 2003
AL RUTBAH, Iraq – Iraqi children and their families in a western desert town will receive thousands of World Vision aid parcels today.
World Vision is delivering more than 3,200 packages to the people of Al Rutba containing relief items such as boots, clothing, blankets, plastic sheeting and water containers. American and Canadian companies and provided many of the items, with remaining supplies coming from World Vision emergency stocks.
The packages will be handed out to families identified by the community as needing assistance.
Over the next month, all the children in the town will receive summer clothing as well as jackets for winter when night temperatures plunge.
Al Rutba is a desert town of some 25,000 people based some 80 miles inside Iraq from the Jordanian border. The town is poor – little more than a trading and market outpost for sheep farmers or truckers plying the route between Baghdad and Jordan.
The town also suffered during the war. The district hospital was destroyed and the town lost power and water supplies, now largely restored.
“These care kits will go a long way to showing the Iraqis we are working with that people outside the country care for them and want their best,” said World Vision logistics manager Mike Pattison. “Al Rutba comes a long way down the scale, even for Iraq, when it comes to a low standard of living. Within one month every family will have received something.”
World Vision has been working in the town for more than four weeks and has more than US$1m budgeted in assistance lined up.
The international humanitarian aid agency has already done the following:
· Started repairing and upgrading 12 rundown or looted primary schools
· Commenced modernizing a poorly maintained primary health care center
· Handed over US$11,000 worth of medical supplies, blankets, plastic sheeting and water containers to doctors at Al Rutba Hospital
CONTACTS: mediainfo@worldvision.org
