Corona emergency aid worldwide

With good hygiene against viruses and bacteria

When in December 2019 several people in the Chinese city of Wuhan fell ill with an unknown pneumonia, nobody knew what the world would look like a few months later. The COVID 19 pandemic has changed the everyday life of people worldwide and will continue to do so in the future.

This time is a special one for arche noVa, too: As an internationally active relief organization in the field of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), the effects of the pandemic on our daily work are very diverse. In the past months it became clear how essential access to clean water is. Thorough hand washing is the basis for maintaining your own health and protecting your fellow human beings. Our work is therefore more important than ever.

The coronavirus changes our work

While the administrative work in our office in Dresden can relatively easily be transformed into a home office, this is impossible in many of our project countries because our work is mostly focused on direct personal contact with people. Whether it's distributing bread to internally displaced persons in Syria or the meetings of the hygiene committees in the villages around Lake Victoria - these activities cannot be transferred to the Internet.

And nevertheless our emergency aid cannot simply stop. That is why, for example, the number of distribution points for bread and food has been increased in Syria in order to reduce the number of people and the risk of infection. At the same time, the distribution times were doubled and the amount of water distributed per person was increased to allow more frequent hand washing. Of course, our colleagues also provide information about CoVid-19 and how to protect yourself from it.

The prevention work covers a wide range of measures, which are always adapted to the respective situation in our project areas. In Myanmar, for example, information material has been produced and distributed in printed form, while our partner organization in Uganda uses Megafon to provide information verbally in the villages. Another important measure is the distribution of hygiene packages to provide needy families with the necessary materials to ensure basic hygiene. Contents include soap, hand disinfectant, shower gel, shampoo, washing powder, washing-up liquid and other cleaning agents. Especially in our project areas in the Middle East, where we mostly provide emergency aid for refugees, these packages make a minimum of hygiene possible.