JDC Emergency Team on the Ground in Balkans with Refugees

NEW YORK, NY -- The doctor is in. But Dr. Rick Hodes isn't running a private clinic. Instead, the American specialist is working among some 300 thousand people stranded on the Albanian border.

"Most of the people I've seen are in acceptable physical condition, but the psychological shock and trauma these people are suffering is real and needs to be dealt with," Hodes noted today in Tirana, Albania. Hodes and a small team from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) arrived by boat from Rome (all flights to Albania had been cancelled) and immediately set out to work. Hodes has plenty of experience practicing under such conditions. He has treated refugees in previous JDC humanitarian interventions in Somalia (1992), Rwanda (1994), and Ethiopia (since 1990).

Hodes and Manlio Dell'Ariccia, the JDC's country director for Albania, headed straight to the Refugee Sorting Center on the Albanian border, where 300,000 are camped. "When you consider that there are 3 million people in the entire country, this border community equals ten percent of the the total population," said Hodes."Still, there is no authoritative system of registering who is here, what their status is, and where they are going." After surveying the supply centers in Tirana, Hodes noted that there was plenty of food, medicine, clothing and blankets in storage. The problem, he says, is distribution. "Right now, there is no organized means of efficiently managing the process of getting these necessities to the people who need them."

Hodes and Dell'Ariccia met with Tirana's Mayor Albert Brojka and representatives of other non-governmental organizations in the field, to pool information and organize efforts to manage the relief efforts that are converging on this border site.

Those wishing to donate to the rescue and relief efforts of the JDC may send their checks to: the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), 711 Third Avenue - 10th Floor, New York, NY 10017. The memo line of the check and the outer envelope should be marked "Kosovo Relief."