Palal Areman is a Logistics Manager for Save the Children’s Emergency Health Unit. Palal and his team of medical experts are on standby 24 hours a day to deploy to emergencies around the world where they set up healthcare facilities for children and their families.
His role involves sourcing vehicles to move staff and supplies to the impacted communities, sourcing items such as tents and medical equipment, and setting up the facilities where the teams will provide healthcare services.
Palal has worked as a humanitarian for more than 10 years in some of the world’s most challenging contexts: Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Bangladesh and Sierra Leone. He most recently spent nine months in DRC working on Save the Children’s response to the deadly Ebola outbreak. While Palal admits Ebola is a scary disease, he says he draws motivation and confidence from his past experience working on the world’s largest Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014 and the knowledge he is helping children survive.
When he’d not deployed, Palal lives with his partner and their son in Kenya.
Save the Children’s Emergency Health Unit has the speed, expertise and reach to help children in the toughest places. Our four teams of medical and logistical experts are strategically placed in disaster hotspots around the world and can start delivering life-saving healthcare to children within 72 hours of deployment.
Since 2015, the Emergency Health Unit has deployed 30 times, trained more than 5,000 health workers and reached more than 3 million children and adults.
Palal’s story in his own words
My name is Palal Areman. I’m the Logistics Manager for one of the teams for the Emergency Health Unit. I’ve been in the humanitarian field now for more than 10 years, working for several international organisations including MSF (Medicines Sans Frontiers) and now Save the Children. I’ve held different positions. I started out as a pharmacist, then a Medical Logistician for Save the Children and now a Logistics Manager.
I’ve worked in Kenya. I’ve done stints in Somalia, Sierra Leone for the Ebola response, Bangladesh for the Myanmar (Rohingya crisis) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for the Ebola response.
My role as the Logistics Manager is to make sure all the logistic elements of a deployment are taken care of within the Emergency Health Unit. This includes making sure the procurement is on time and the vehicle fleet is present for the team, that the assets are taken care of and the transportation and distribution of materials happens in a timely manner for our beneficiaries.
The Logistics Manager is an exciting position because you are the heart and engine of any deployment and this provides great satisfaction. Making sure we get our supplies to beneficiaries on time, getting our staff to where they need to be on time and getting them the supplies they need on time – this all brings great satisfaction. In terms of being with other team members, you are the centre of attention and it’s lovely!
My time in Bangladesh was a great time in terms of the humanitarian work we did for the Emergency Health Unit. Initially during the set up, we had to walk huge distances. First, we would drive for more than an hour, then we’d need to get out of the vehicle because we couldn’t access the whole population. It’s a hilly place where you need to walk three to four kilometres, and on other days 10 kilometres return. We managed to reach the population and set up nine clinics, which was massive for the people.
One of my biggest reflections is one day after coming back from setting up one of the clinics, I caught a glimpse of one of the beneficiaries carrying their baby. It was wrapped in a white sheet and I think they were taking the baby for burial. And that kept me thinking about the importance of the work we do as humanitarians, and sometimes the overwhelming nature that we can’t reach everyone. And that the humanitarian’s job is really important and sometimes it can be overwhelming, but with the work we do we end up helping a large number of people and give them support and help. At the end of my three months there I can attest there were more actors out in the field, who could reach more children out there who needed our help.
I arrived in the Ebola response in August 2018. As with many deployments, the set up was challenging in terms of procurement and getting supplies at the right time, getting the fleet and finding local staff to support the response. I did work long hours doing multiple jobs from managing the fleet to procurement and warehousing my myself for a month or two until I got a warehouse assistant to help with this work.
The initial stage was completely tough and challenging, but we coped. Being ready and trained by the Emergency Health Unit with the expertise of in terms of logistics and water and sanitation and the response lead management, we worked effectively in the response and contributed as Save the Children to reduce the number of Ebola cases in Beni.
Before coming to the Ebola response, as any human, you have the fear of the unknown because Ebola is a disease that is scary. And there’s also the family part as they worry about you when you get out into the field. But drawing from my experience as a humanitarian and having worked on the Ebola response in West Africa, I felt I had the expertise to come and support the Ebola response in Beni (DRC) with the Emergency Health Unit and Save the Children to reach all our beneficiaries and more importantly the children.
