TedChaiban

You can vaccinate a child for a dollar, an education kit for 80 students will cost 200 dollars. 10,000 water purification tablets cost 66 dollars and that cleans 50,000 liters of water.

About 85 % of the funds go directly to the relief effort. UNICEF focus is on children. We are dealing with the most immediate life saving needs at this stage. The first priorities are water and sanitation, shelter, and health. In addition, we are concerned about children being separated from their families. So we need to work with partners to identify separated children, making sure they are in a safe space and trace their families.

It is very bad. The description from colleagues on the ground is this is very similar to what happened with the Indian Ocean tsunami, where at the epicenter of the typhoon, notably Tacloban, there is large scale desctruction, debris is skewed all over, and access is made very difficult. In terms of responding to the needs, basic things like having fuel to move supplies is very difficult. And there is a large number of people who have been severely affected and displaced by this crisis. So this is for real. And, we need to make this a priority.

This is an important question to start addressing from the very beginning. What is important is to work on the resumption of basic social services so there is a sense of normalcy and children can access these services. Amongst the most importance, is the resumption of education so that children are in a familiar environment and begin the healing process. In addition, children will need pyschosocial support, to deal with the stress that they have been under, including the possible loss of lives in their families and loved ones. We also need to start looking at early recovery and reconstruction activities from the get go, starting with water systems but also looking at health and education infrastructure.

1. There are a large number of credible organizations on the ground, including organizations whose name you'd recognize, such as Medecins Sans Frontieres, Save the Children, local Red Cross, as well as credible UN agencies such as World Food Programme, WHO, and of course UNICEF. A number of media outlets have supported links to credible organizations and this is one way to be able to contribute if you'd like to do so.