ProVention Sponsors Grants
for Disaster Risk Reduction

The ProVention Consortium has awarded modest grants to individuals and/or teams in developing countries to encourage them to become more involved in disaster risk reduction. Recipients of the first round of grants presented their findings at a “Global Symposium for Hazard Risk Reduction” at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Encouraged by the success of the program, ProVention is now teaming up with the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, the University of Cape Town and the Disaster Management Center at the University of Wisconsin to sponsor a second round of grants to support research on disaster risk management.

The Consortium has invited young professionals from developing countries to submit proposals in the form of research projects, professional internships or professional development programs. Projects should focus on links between disasters, development and the environment, and should fall into three general categories (i) risk identification and analysis, (ii) risk reduction, and (iii) risk sharing/transfer. Read more about the grant program and its results at www.proventionconsortium.org. Deadline for submission is 15 May.

We realize many readers will receive this information too late to meet this deadline. News of this competition, which reached us between issues of the Newsletter, was circulated to our listserv in April.

Interested in becoming a member of our listserv? Send your name, postal address and e-mail address to disaster-newsletter@ paho.org to receive advance notice of publications, meeting and other time-sensitive news, including an electronic version of this newsletter, weeks before the print copy reaches you.

SUMA Team Deployed
to Indonesia at the Request of WHO

In the weeks following the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that devastated Indonesia last December, international aid poured into the country. At the request of WHO, a SUMA team was dispatched to help the Ministry of Health to classify the supplies piling up in warehouses. The team first went to Jakarta to introduce the SUMA system to the Ministry of Health authorities and train them in its use. They also worked with the Ministry to translate the front end of the system into the Indonesian language. From there, the team moved on to Banda Aceh where it helped collect information on pharmaceuticals and health/medical supplies at the airport, organized the Provincial Health Authorities’ warehouse and set up the SUMA system to distribute supplies to NGO health centers and districts. Arrangements have been made to translate the entire SUMA system into the Indonesian language and local staff are being trained to allow them to continue with the tasks at the provincial level. For additional information about SUMA and its activities worldwide, visit: www.disaster-info.net/SUMA.