The Medair team is working closely with U.N. officials and other humanitarian organisations to assure effective collaboration. Medair's Reconstruction Advisor, Mark Wooding, is actively participating in inter-agency strategic planning to ensure that beneficiaries receive appropriate and effective help where most needed.

"While life in Padang City gets back to normal, the provincial government is beginning to think about how to check the structural integrity of 200 municipal buildings, starting with 20 hospitals," reports Wooding. "Business persons ask how they will rebuild their tower blocks. Pariaman City to the north is 80 percent destroyed and in rural areas, whole villages have disappeared under landslides. Families huddle under plastic sheets waiting for the impending rains."

Medair's work focuses on people in crisis in the most remote, hard-to-reach areas of disaster zones. As such, the Medair team is concentrating its efforts on assessing the needs of people living in rural areas where road access is impeded by the impact of the two earthquakes.

Early assessment results indicate that the greatest needs in remote areas of Indonesia will centre around emergency shelter for the short-term, followed by longer-term rehabilitation efforts to rebuild permanent housing and community infrastructure. The latter will most likely be undertaken by the people themselves, using rebuilding grants that the Indonesian government has promised in its recovery strategy.

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Medair is a Swiss-founded and based humanitarian organisation that brings life-saving emergency relief and rehabilitation in disasters, conflict areas, and other crises by working alongside the most vulnerable. Medair stands alongside Swiss Solidarity, a longstanding Medair partner, and its efforts to rally the support of all Swiss people on behalf of the vulnerable people of Indonesia.