Service Projects

“We can lose everything, but we cannot lose hope. I wish to bring them hope to make them feel loved.”

Hong Kong Red Cross Volunteer nurse Carman, a palliative care nurse in Hong Kong, was deployed to work in the Gaza ICRC Rafah field hospital in May 2024. She recalled a male patient losing all his loved ones in one of the major explosions, leaving him terrified and in tears. He postponed his essential surgery to attend his family's funerals. During the surgery, he kept calling out his wife's name. Although Carman did not understand what he was saying, she chose to stay with him, talking and crying alongside him. "What patients need most here is hope, and our presence with them brings hope."

The Health Emergency Response Unit (HERU) trains and deploys a pool of professionally trained volunteers to respond to overseas humanitarian needs during disasters and health emergencies.

Over the past 19 years, the professional volunteers of the Health Emergency Response Unit have ranged across the world, in response to different emergencies, disease outbreaks and other humanitarian crises including earthquake in Sichuan, typhoon in Philippines, Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa, complex emergencies in Syria, earthquake in Haiti, humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, and crisis in Israel and Gaza Strip.

Your donation enables each of our professional volunteers to take swift action in times of emergencies, provide timely emergency medical care, save lives and protect human dignity to those in need. Find out more on HERU here