For Immediate Release
January 13, 2010

Nurse Volunteer Group to Coordinate Emergency Nursing Mission—Immediate Need for Travel and Medicine Donations

More than 700 registered nurses from across the U.S. have responded in just a few hours to the call by the nation’s largest organization of registered nurses for volunteers to provide assistance to residents of earthquake-devastated Haiti —and the RNs are now issuing an urgent appeal for the public to support these efforts with donations of funds to support travel costs and medical supplies on their upcoming emergency nursing mission. 

The relief efforts are being coordinated by the Registered Nurse Response Network (RNRN), a project of the 150,000-member National Nurses United (NNU), formed last month through the unification of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, United American Nurses and Massachusetts Nurses Association.

RNRN/NNU is hoping to have nurse volunteers on the ground in Haiti within the next few days and is coordinating with Haitian nurses on effort.

Details are still being worked out, but those able to support the efforts of these nurses can get involved via:

• www.NationalNursesUnited.com to sign up to volunteer or donate
  
  
• @NationalNurses on twitter or by following #haitiRN
  
  
• Calling 1-800-578-8225
  
  
• Making contributions for the RNRN/NNU effort by sending checks to RNRN/NNU, c/o California Nurses Foundation, 2000 Franklin St., Oakland, CA 94612

RNRN sent hundreds of nurse volunteers to the Gulf region following Hurricane Katrina. RNRN has also sent volunteers to Sri Lanka after the South Asia tsunami and to Southern California following huge wildfires there.  RNRN is affiliated with National Nurses United, AFL-CIO, the national union and professional association for Registered Nurses.

“The need for nurses has never been so acute.  We need financial support to transport them,” said NNU Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro.  “Nurses will be fundamental to the disaster relief process, to provide immediate healing and therapeutic support to the patients and families facing the devastation from this tragic earthquake,” DeMoro said.