Aid Group Reels From Fund-Overdrive

Aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has flown around 250 tons of relief supplies so far to the Asian countries hit by the tsunami. Its volunteers in Europe have loaded everything from medicines, generators, mosquito nets and plastic sheets on to charter planes bound for the crisis regions.

Most of the supplies were bought by the funds and charitable donations that have been pouring into the organization's bank account ever since the disaster struck on Dec. 26, 2004. The German chapter of MSF says it has collected over €30 million ($39.5 million) in Germany alone.

No more money needed?

But, more than 10 days after the powerful undersea quake in the Indian Ocean devastated the coastlines of several south Asian countries, MSF has asked people to stop donating for the tsunami-hit regions.

Surprising as it sounds, the organization says that all the large emergency medical aid programs in the affected regions are completely financed at the moment and further money isn't needed at this point.

"We've already raked in more than our entire income in the past year," said Ulrike von Pilar, head of the German branch of MSF. "We have to remind people that we're just an emergency-medicine organization. The money that's flowing in has to be sensibly invested in programs that really guarantee medical quality in the long term. That's not what we're about."

Donate, but not just for South Asia

That's why MSF is now urging people to transfer money to them without explicitly mentioning "seaquake" on the transactions because that would only allow it to use the donations for the tsunami-affected regions in Asia.

"We can't exactly guarantee that we can use the funds there in the next few months," said von Pilar. "So, if donors really want to contribute towards reconstruction in the disaster zones, it's better if they give to other organizations who plan to work there in the long term."

At the same time von Pilar stressed that MSF still welcomed donations that weren't earmarked for a certain region. "We could always use the money where it's needed most urgently," she said. "That could be in Asia at the moment or in other large crisis regions where we work, in Darfur or in Congo, for instance."

"Logistical nightmare"

MSF is a veteran as far as managing humanitarian crisis goes. The private emergency-medicine organization has been around since the early 1970s and has grown into an international network with offices in 18 countries.

But, despite its experience in the field, the aid group admits that the deployment in South Asia in the wake of the devastating tsunami has been quite a challenge.

"Transporting relief supplies to the worst-affected regions has been a logistical nightmare," said Petra Meyer, spokeswoman for MSF's German branch. "Things are particularly bad in the Indonesian province of Banda Aceh where there's hardly any fuel, the helicopters can't land because most streets have been washed away, and the airport naturally is overburdened so that heavy cargo planes can't touch down there at all."

MSF has several hundred international and local colleagues in even the most inaccessible tsunami-hit regions. However, the group is uncertain how long it will take before the basic medical needs of the civilian population are met.

"At the moment, we can't say how long we'll stay on in the region with our emergency medicine program," said Meyer. "Definitely weeks, maybe even months."