FUNDESUMA -- raising profile of supplies management
26 Apr 2001 By Ruth Gidley
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FUNDESUMA, based in San José, Costa Rica, is dedicated to improving management of supplies for disaster response. Executive director Edgardo Acosta told Ruth Gidley how software and systems were developed that could be put to use anywhere in Latin American, the Caribbean and beyond. AN: How did FUNDESUMA begin?EA: A long time ago. In 1986, there was an eruption of the Nevado del Ruíz volcano in Colombia. The emergency response was extremely disorganised, and as a result the Colombian Red Cross presented a proposal to the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO, or OPS in Spanish) to develop a project that would be a tool for supplies management, including a specific computer programme. PAHO took the project and presented it to the government of the Netherlands, which in 1992 gave the finances for what we call "SUMA". The name comes from "suministro de materiales" (supplies management) in Spanish and from "supplies management "in English. In 1996 we set up FUNDESUMA -- a foundation -- because organisations such as PAHO were not designed for disaster response, but for technical support. All of us who had worked for PAHO moved into FUNDESUMA. AN: Can you explain how SUMA works.EA: It's several things. It's a method for humanitarian supplies management, and training for the people who are going to operate it, and it also involves producing materials, such as software, manuals, technical leaflets, that everyone can find and download from the Internet. Everything we produce is in the public domain. We've considered asking people to fill in a registration form but unfortunately this wouldn't be very popular in Latin America, so we've left it as it is.Another important activity is disaster response itself. After each disaster, we always go to help the government and NGOs to improve their supplies management. The latest occasion was the earthquakes in El Salvador. The World Health Organisation (WHO) also contracts us for operations in other parts of the world. We were in East Timor for the crisis. We've been present after every disaster -- great or small -- in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1992. The greatest for us was Hurricane Mitch (in 1998), which mostly affected Honduras and Nicaragua. We have been in many different situations, with or without government support. Sometimes we work with just the Red Cross.AN: How do you decide where to carry out training?EA: We give courses in all the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, at the request of governments or NGOs such as the Red Cross, World Vision and CARE. Most of the costs are covered by FUNDESUMA and PAHO. We also give courses outside Latin America. We've given courses in Rwanda, the Philippines, Japan. AN: So the system can be adapted for use anywhere in the world?EA: This system is very user-friendly, so any region or country can change any of the words. You know we speak Spanish in Latin America, but the word for "light bulb", for example, is different in each country. In one place it's "foco", in another it's "bombillo", in another it's "bulbo". So this can be changed for each country. On top of that, the software and all the materials are in four languages -- English, Spanish, French and Portuguese. And it doesn't need us or a computer expert to make the changes -- people can do that in their own countries.AN: What kinds of problems are you trying to avoid by using this system?EA: The first problem is that countries often don't set up an appropriate system for managing supplies prior to experiencing a disaster. Now at least, they are conscious of the issue, and at least in the international organisations that distribute supplies and the national emergency committees in each country, at least there are several people dedicated to supplies management. We've prepared instructors for many of these organisations and they're now using the software and methodology as a matter of routine, not just for disasters. The programme has a component for keeping track of supplies in storage. We found that sometimes we might go to a country and do training, but six months later the staff had changed and no one knew where anything was, so we developed a module that could be used on an ongoing basis, and that's what they've got used to now. This has greatly improved supplies management.AN: Does the system help to avoid the problem of inappropriate donations?EA: Yes. We found that the items that arrived after a disaster were not necessarily what people who had been affected most needed. They might be useful, but not for the emergency. For example, vitamins for children, which are useful, but would be not be a top priority in the emergency. We have managed to change things so that at the point of entry, usually the airport, items are classified, unpacked and properly packed up again in order to reach the victims who can make best use of them. By compiling all this information nationally, both public and private authorities can see from the list what has arrived, where it is, and who has received it and, as a result, coordinate amongst themselves to mobilise assistance and exchange items. For example, the government could say to the Red Cross: "We've got a hundred stretchers that we're not using." Or "We'll swap these with you for antibiotics." One thing we still haven't managed is to do is conclude what percentage of donations were suitable for a specific disaster, because our countries are poor, and sometimes people consider that anything will be useful sooner or later. But we have managed to study what kind of donations arrive, and found information such as that disasters change. For example, everyone sent medicines for Venezuela, but most of the donations for Honduras were food. So we presume that this must be related to a different emphasis in the media regarding each disaster. And the higher the death toll, the more airtime the media give to the disaster, and the more the airtime, the more the international aid.AN: When you mention centralising unloading in the airport, this reminds me of the situation in El Salvador this year, where supplies were initially being taken to the capital and then back to the airport for distribution.EA: There are always problems at the very beginning, for several reasons. You don't have a place to work, you don't have the staff, so someone needs to lend you staff and Red Cross volunteers are busy with the injured. The army or other organisations can usually lend you people. There is also a lack of trust in the early days, which it's hard to get past, and after a disaster in Latin America, the government always goes through a period of total chaos that lasts from one to eight days. Within two or three weeks of the disaster in El Salvador, they managed to set up a very good system so that items didn't remain in the airport any longer than four hours after arriving. They went directly to where they were needed. This was a great achievement on the part of the government and NGOs.However, it's one thing to centralise goods and another thing to centralise information about supplies. When we talk about centralising information, we don't mean that it has to be under government control. We mean that it has to be all in one place so people can go there and look for it. That's why we almost always operate under the U.N. flag, because when you go to a country and the government sees foreigners and the U.N. flag it shows more respect and allows you to work a little more freely. It also means they can't hide so much, so it works as a kind of guarantee that the information will be open to everyone.AN: Openness is often an issue when large-scale donations are involved.EA: Behind all this what were trying to do is get the governments and civil society to be accountable, and to demand transparency, so that everyone -- the press, the communities -- can see where items they have donated have gone, who received them, and what places still have unmet needs. We've had problems in some countries with governments that have a personal interest in maintaining disorder, because there's often corruption.AN: Is it difficult to persuade organisations to cooperate? Sometimes NGOs can be quite territorial.EA: This is a struggle that you have to overcome before the disaster. When you arrive and you talk to the Red Cross, World Vision, CARE, Caritas and other religious and non-religious organisations like them, and you give them courses to convince them of the benefits. You convince them that if an emergency happens they're not going to have resources taken away from them, but that it will be a case of sharing. All this work before the disaster is extremely important, because if one happens and you haven't done it, it's almost impossible to achieve anything.For example, in the disaster in Venezuela, we couldn't do anything at all with the government in the capital, Caracas, at first, but within weeks they opened up the barracks and the warehouses to us, and let us record some of the information.AN: What are your hopes for the near future?EA: I believe that the software in itself as a tool will lose a lot of importance, because other commercial software will be developed, but our hope is that the disaster community will adopt standards and norms for supplies management. To have a system and a website to coordinate and exchange information on any disaster in the world -- who is giving what -- and to have an up-to-date account of this. After a disaster, everyone's running around like crazy trying to find out whose taking charge, what's needed, and we hope that supplies management will become taken for granted in this process. After a disaster, no one questions that the first thing to do is take care of the injured, but often no one takes care of the supplies. Latin American countries and organisation are gradually coming up with well-developed systems, but there's still a lot to be done.For more information, visit the FUNDESUMA website: http://www.disaster.info.desastres.net/SUMA/
