From the beginning, Malaysian Red Crescent (MRC) has worked to relieve suffering in the world, and promote peace through disaster management, health and community services. During the early years, MRC focused on responding to disasters, building capacity as an organisation to train members and volunteers in first aid, disaster management, emergency response, and supporting communities towards good health and wellbeing.
Today, MRC is one of the lead agencies for disaster management in Malaysia, building programmes and activities to prepare for a disaster, and work towards reducing the factors that cause them. During an emergency, MRC assits with early recovery and mass cooking and once the crisis is over, works hand-in-hand with communities to help overcome their struggles, rebuild their lives and transform from victim to survivor to rescuer.
Resilient communities are built with the future in mind. That means ensuring on-going support and a wide range of assistance is available until a certain level of self-sufficiency has been reached. This is particularly essential considering the severity of disasters, mainly floods, have worsened over the past decade. Supporting the community, empowering individuals with skills, tools, and training, and listening to what people need to accelerate recovery after a disaster, has made the most significant impact. The culmination of which has been recorded in the story of the East Coast Floods, where nine villages have been adopted since 2014.
Floodplains near coastal areas and along rivers become severely flooded, which impacts the communities living in the vicinity. During the early years, there was little or no warning of imminent flooding, and many would become trapped in their homes, unable to call for help.
With a strong presence in the community, trained first aiders all over the country and a large body of volunteers, MRC was ideally placed to make a difference. The foundations had been firmly laid for the Society to be able to help authorities cope with civil disasters effectively such as, community outreach and feeding, assisting in hospitals, transporting the sick and wounded, operating mobile and static first aid clinics and undertaking blood donor recruitment.
National Disaster Response Team (NDRT) will be expanding to enhance the emergency response capacity in MRC. The NDRT has technical knowledge on disaster response management, basic first aid and is trained to support all emergency operations where necessary. Volunteers are also encouraged to be an active part of community emergency preparedness planning so that they can be more involved and establish a relationship with the professional emergency responders that they will work beside during a disaster.
Search and rescue skills monthly training for members of MRC Rapid Deployment Squad (RDS) was held on September 16, 2020 at Port Dickson, Negeri Sembilan. The focus of the training was water rescue and rope technical rescue. The 4 days 3 nights training was attended by 14 RDS members from Headquarters. MRC Secretary General, YBrs Tuan Haji Hakim Haji Hamzah also attended on third day to witness the technical training with participants.
Floodplains near coastal areas and along rivers become severely flooded, which impacts the communities living in the vicinity. During the early years, there was little or no warning of imminent flooding, and many would become trapped in their homes, unable to call for help.
With a strong presence in the community, trained first aiders all over the country and a large body of volunteers, MRC was ideally placed to make a difference. The foundations had been firmly laid for the Society to be able to help authorities cope with civil disasters effectively such as, community outreach and feeding, assisting in hospitals, transporting the sick and wounded, operating mobile and static first aid clinics and undertaking blood donor recruitment.
