Mamadee Baro, Plan
International’s regional deputy director for operations in the Senegalese
capital Dakar says staffs in Liberia have got to adjust their operational
strategies to cope with the prevailing emergency in the country if the
organization is to continue to save lives.
“You
cannot treat an emergency as if you are dealing with a normal situation or
running normal program. What Plan has on the book are for normal operations.
This is an emergency situation. So, in order for us to make impacts and save
more lives, you people that work here on the ground have to adopt emergency
steps,” he made the statement at an assessment briefing when he, along with
four other senior managers of the organization visited Monrovia to assess
Plan’s response in the fight against the Ebola virus disease.
His statement came when Plan
Liberia’s country management team among other challenges named internal
operational and system challenges as well as lack of experience in emergency
response systems such as system coordination, commitment and field management,
as factors affecting its response mechanisms.
Mr. xyz is Plan Liberia’s
emergency response head. In a PowerPoint presentation in the organization’s
headquarters in Sinkor, Monrovia, he also emphasized the unavailability of
quality human resource including deployment and support from regional and
international headquarters; working through local NGOs with weak capacity as
well as poor coordination of response in the country despite the number of clusters
as main challenges facing the organization’s Ebola response.
For DDO Baro, emergency situations
like the Ebola outbreak naturally come with their own peculiarities that will
require new learning and strategic adaptation.
Baro was not the only member of the
delegation with this opinion. Plan USA Chief Executive Officer, Tessie San
Martin, responding to questions about what Plan could have done better in its
support to fight Ebola in Liberia, told me at one of the Community Care Centers
(CCC) in Bomi that the virus outbreak presented new challenges not only to Plan
but to everyone. “This whole outbreak was
new and it presented new and strange challenges to everyone. So, it is not
about what could have been done better. We all learned as we intervened. What
is important now is how we can continue to support our team here in Liberia to
save more lives” she said.
Agreed Baro; saving lives was more
than anything else. “You can’t keep money
when people are dying. We know the rules are in the book but will you keep the
money when people are dying? I say no! Go ahead to spend the money but in a
transparent and justifiable way to save life. One life saved is worth more than
millions of dollars,” he reiterated in a chat with me in Tubmanburg, Bomi
County.
Other members of the delegation were Awa xyz, Communications Manager in the Dakar regional
office, Jonathan Mitchell, Director of International Programs, Tanya Barron,
Chief Executive for Plan’s UK office, and Tessie San Martin, Chief Executive at
Plan Washington DC office.
STORY BY: Samuka V. Konneh (Monrovia)