(RNS) — Within the wake of what could also be Turkey’s deadliest earthquake, Samaritan’s Purse, the Christian humanitarian reduction group, introduced it might ship a 52-bed emergency discipline hospital to town of Antakya, traditionally generally known as Antioch.
The group, run by founder and president the Rev. Franklin Graham, mentioned it would additionally ship greater than 100 medical and technical employees to the ravaged area, a spokesperson mentioned. Some have already departed.
Official counts Thursday (Feb. 9) topped 20,000 lifeless within the earthquakes that devastated southern Turkey and Syria on Monday. The dual temblors of large 7.8 and seven.5 magnitude got here inside 10 hours of one another.
The sphere hospital will embody two emergency working rooms and a pharmacy. A chartered 747 plane was anticipated to take off from Atlanta to Turkey Thursday night carrying roughly 90 metric tons of cargo, together with hygiene objects, photo voltaic lights and tarps, a spokesperson mentioned.
“It’s chilly there and survivors are in shock — they want our assist,” Graham mentioned in an announcement.
As Antioch, one of many Roman Empire’s largest cities, Antakya was an influential heart of early Christianity. The Crusaders later seized it and it has been reconquered quite a few instances. It had a inhabitants of practically 400,000.
The battle in Ukraine has been drawing a lot of Samaritan’s Purse’s reduction efforts over the previous 12 months, however in any given 12 months, the group aids individuals in 110–120 international locations.
For practically a decade it has designed and assembled emergency discipline hospitals. Prior to now two years it put them to make use of to handle the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy; the Bahamas; New York Metropolis; Los Angeles; Jackson, Mississippi; and Lenoir, North Carolina.
It has additionally constructed up a corps of Christian medical doctors, nurses and different medical professionals who volunteer on short-term journeys to mission hospitals the world over.
Additionally on Thursday, the United Nations despatched its first help convoy into Syria. Rescue crews are frantically looking out by collapsed buildings and ruins for trapped survivors. Many are sheltering in tents.
Different worldwide Christian reduction organizations are responding to the disaster, together with World Imaginative and prescient, Ship Reduction, and Assist to the Church in Want, Christianity At the moment reported. Turkish and Syrian Christians have additionally responded, working alongside the native Purple Crescent and Turkey’s Catastrophe and Emergency Administration Authority.
RELATED: From shoeboxes to battle zones: How Samaritan’s Purse turned a $1 billion humanitarian help powerhouse