World Humanitarian Day

On World Humanitarian Day, the Salvadoran Association for Humanitarian Assistance PRO-VIDA honors the memory of men and women who gave their lives in the performance of humanitarian assistance. Medical professionals who in difficult moments during the armed conflict, despite the difficulties, provided assistance and protection to hundreds of  people who needed it, to all medical personnel who continue to do their work from the first line in these difficult times with the interest to save lives.

36 years after the founding of PRO-VIDA, it continues faithful to its mission promoting participatory processes in Integral Health, Risk Management and Resilience to Climate Change, Territorial Development, as well as Institutional Strengthening to improve the quality of life of the vulnerable population with a focus on law, gender, and different generations.

This year the COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most complex challenges for humanitarian work around the world. The lack of access to essential services and the restrictions imposed by governments around the world have meant that those who have been at the forefront of the response are the communities, civil society, and local NGOs. PRO-VIDA emphasizes the work of community structures that are and continue working on the front line in all the communities of our country.

Through the Integral Health Program, PRO-VIDA serves communities in conditions of greater vulnerability, with an emphasis on children, women, and the elderly affected by confinement, in which the population becomes the victim of one of the worst pandemic in the world in the last hundred years. Each country suffers the pandemic according to the measures taken by its authorities and according to the capacity of its health system, recognizing that El Salvador has a very weak and collapsed health system, and need a specific strategy and plan to contain the contagion of the coronavirus.

As a humanitarian response and assistance, the organization has activated the medical and humanitarian response team to bring food, hygiene items, and necessities to the most vulnerable and low-income families, who do not have access to the health system and basic services. PRO-VIDA is taking up the experience of humanitarian assistance in crises to avoid more deaths due to lack of medical attention, lack of personal protective equipment, medicines, and medical personnel.

PRO-VIDA has launched the campaign "Supporting the struggle against COVID 19, for the life of the Medical personnel and COVID Positive Families", together with the SHARE Foundation and CARECEN LA to raise funds for the assistance of people affected by COVID 19 in El Salvador.  With the support of the international community that stands in solidarity through its contributions with medical personnel, patients from rural communities, the social movement, journalists, and independent health workers, families who have lost their jobs, and loved ones due to COVID-19.
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PRO-VIDA has delivered food kits, hygiene kits, and personal protection to families in various areas of the country, families in the most vulnerable communities to emergencies in the context of the pandemic, and the effects of storms Amanda and Cristóbal. PRO VIDA reaffirms on the World Humanitarian Day always be faithful to their mission of accompanying the most vulnerable populations, especially in the context of the COVID 19 pandemic. The reality in El Salvador represents a complex challenge for humanitarian operations, which reveals the enormous social inequality in the country, the violation of human rights, discrimination, and social exclusion that must be eradicated to achieve a more just society.
 
San Salvador, August 19, 2020

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