The year 2024 was special for us in three ways: we celebrated our 10th anniversary, embarked on our most challenging mission to date and, after several busy years, finally classified ourselves as an Emergency Medical Team. But first things first. For us, the year seemed to be characterized by hardened fronts, both militarily and socially: war in Gaza, war in Ukraine, Democrats against Republicans in the USA, to name just a few examples. We were confronted with some of these fronts, sometimes more, sometimes less directly.

Gaza – a challenge

At the beginning of February, four months after the Hamas attacks in Israel and the start of the war on Palestinian territory, we were able to bring our medical team to Gaza after intensive planning. This made us both the first German organization and the first German EMT on the ground.
The destruction we saw right from the start, especially in northern Gaza, was massive. We kept coming across people fleeing southwards. Photo: CADUS Our press release at the time forebodingly stated: “This is our organization’s most complicated mission to date. Logistical challenges and the tense security situation go hand in hand with the particularly serious humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.” Since then, we have been continuously on the ground. From the very beginning, we have worked closely with our colleagues from the Palestinian Red Crescent, who are doing an incredible job in the face of inhumane conditions. Our teams assisted in care points for the seriously injured and helped out in emergency rooms of the overburdened local hospitals, treating over 3700 patients.
Our training courses impart important knowledge on the treatment of seriously injured patients. Photo: CADUS We now mainly carry out so-called MedEvacs with a focus on North Gaza. MedEvacs, or medical evacuations, are transports of injured and sick people to and between medical facilities. In the beginning, these were mainly transports within Gaza, but in recent months we have increasingly carried out transports to the border as part of an international rescue chain. There, the patients are taken over by other organizations and transported to hospitals abroad, as the massive destruction often makes adequate medical care within Gaza impossible. We have evacuated 156 patients in 31 transports. In addition, we have conducted nine medical training sessions with 134 participants so far.
The injuries are manifold: gunshot wounds, shrapnel, bruises, fractures and abrasions. Photo: CADUS However, hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people, the risk of bombardment and fighting at any time and in any place and the de facto blockade of aid deliveries by the Israeli army made it almost impossible to care for patients. Even for experienced humanitarian aid workers, the intensity of the situation in Gaza was and still is a frightening novelty.
Compared to our previous missions, there are a particularly large number of children among the dead and injured. Photo: CADUS Over 45,000 Palestinians were killed and over 100,000 injured, including many children, young people and the elderly. Among the dead are 333 humanitarian aid workers, who are actually specially protected by international agreements. Although Palestinian aid workers (286) were the most affected, incidents involving international victims (13) attracted particular attention. For example, the killing of seven employees of the World Central Kitchen by Israeli fire. Despite extensive agreements, our teams have also been hindered in their work on several occasions, detained by Israeli soldiers or exposed to dangerous situations. From the very beginning, we were aware of how delicate the mission would be. Not only because of the dangers and logistical problems, but also because of the public reactions. As an organization, we felt the hardened fronts of the decades-long conflict directly in our own commentary columns: we were either called anti-Semites and Hamas supporters or bootlickers controlled by Israel and the West.

Dying is omnipresent in Gaza, and despite all efforts, patients continue to die. At the same time, life goes on – pregnant women have to be cared for and children are born. Photo: CADUS But we can put up with that, for us the humanitarian claim counts: saving human lives and alleviating suffering. And fortunately, the support for our stance outweighs the criticism. At the same time, we are aware of our special role as a humanitarian organization that was one of the few international voices able to report from the ground, especially at the beginning of the war. We have to constantly strike a balance between our mandate as a humanitarian organization committed to humanitarian principles, the need to provide background information and context and to report on what we experience during our missions, while at the same time not endangering our teams in the field and our projects. We sometimes succeed in this balancing act, sometimes more and sometimes less. Every MedEvac carried out is a success. Nevertheless, hundreds of patients are still waiting to be transferred and receive appropriate treatment. Photo: CADUS Nevertheless, we will continue our efforts this year to support the people in Gaza. We will also offer more training to strengthen local structures. Our demands to the conflict parties remain the same: stop the fighting, provide humanitarian aid, release hostages and protect civilians!

Ukraine – old paths, new ways

In Ukraine, the front has also hardened. Every meter is being fought for in this war of attrition, in which thousands of people are being sacrificed. We have been on the ground since the outbreak of war; in February it will be three years. Last year, we also provided support with medical training, training and educating 261 people from rescue services and volunteer initiatives in 19 courses from January to June. Our employees in Ukraine do an excellent job of caring for patients. Photo: CADUS Our teams continue to carry out MedEvacs from Sumy, Sloviansk and Dnipro, i.e. patient transports mostly from the frontline to safer areas. We specialize in personnel- and equipment-intensive intensive care transports, for example patients who need to be ventilated. We transported 866 patients in 2024, covering a distance of over 100,000 km. Conditions in Ukraine are particularly difficult from the fall onwards, with increasing cold and frequent disruptions to the electricity and gas supply due to constant shelling by the Russian army. Maintaining our ambulances is a challenge for us; the poor roads and long distances demand a lot from the vehicles. Another year in war-torn Ukraine – a situation that is frighteningly close to normal for us too. But a war with hundreds of deaths every day must not become the norm. No human being should have to die for geopolitics. Caring for patients in a vehicle, often over several hours, is demanding. Photo: CADUS We will continue and even expand our activities in Ukraine in 2025. Building on our experience with our mobile makerspace, we will carry out three activities in the east and south-east of Ukraine as part of the GIZ project “Strengthening urban resilience”. We are currently planning activities to promote the training of female mechanics and to support other local Grass Roots projects on the topic of technical resilience.

CADUS goes EMT

After years of preparatory work and an intensive final spurt lasting several months, we have successfully completed classification by the WHO as an Emergency Medical Team (EMT) 1 mobile and fixed. This makes us the youngest organization to achieve this status to date and the first in Europe to be classified in two categories simultaneously. At the end of the classification, the prospective EMTs have to show the WHO examiners that they are prepared for the missions. We presented our team, our equipment and a lot of documents and procedures. Photo: CADUS We are now proud to be part of the international EMT network, which works according to a common standard. This guarantees the high quality of humanitarian emergency aid and facilitates cooperation between the organizations. We will continue to participate in the exchange and development of the EMT network in the future and take part in joint exercises such as in the Ahr valley in the Ahr valley.

10 years of CADUS

We celebrated the classification and our anniversary with a big party in Berlin with live bands, DJs and speeches from companions. One of our first missions, then still under our old name PHNX: medical emergency training in north-east Syria, 2015. Photo: CADUS/Christoph Löffler When CADUS was founded in 2014, nobody expected that a small initiative from the festival environment would become an internationally active humanitarian aid organization with X employees, hundreds of volunteers and missions in Syria, Iraq, the Mediterranean, Greece, Gaza, Ukraine and many other places. And most importantly, we have been able to support thousands of people directly or indirectly in times of need – and will continue to do so. By joining the Vollgut cooperative, a charitable building project in Berlin Neukölln, we hope to have laid the foundations for the next decades of CADUS with new premises.

Outlook – Mission in Sudan

At the end of the year, there was surprising news from Syria: the former dictator Assad was ousted from power almost overnight and had to flee the country. However, the joy was quickly accompanied by concerns about how the new rulers would govern. As our local partners report, north-east Syria in particular is under pressure: attacks by the Turkish military and allied militias, who are using the current insecurity in Syria to achieve their goals, the feared resurgence of IS and a renewed threat of a humanitarian crisis are dampening the joy at the end of the Assad regime. We are in close contact with our local partners about possible support. In Syria, too, it seems that the time of the fronts is far from over. Our partners from the Kurdish Red Crescent have responded by providing tents and food for the internally displaced persons. Photo: Kurdish Red Crescent (KRC) We will be confronted with a new front for us with our planned mission in Sudan. We have been planning to work there for several months now. Since April 2023, a barely noticed war has been raging there between various factions of the Sudanese army, which has led to the worst hunger crisis in years and forced over 10 million Sudanese to flee. There are still some logistical hurdles to overcome, but we are confident that our first team will be active in Sudan this winter. Many of the fronts appear rigid and deadlocked from the outside. On closer inspection, however, you can see that they are quite flexible on a small scale. The social fronts in particular are very dynamic and can change in many small steps. As long as something is moving, it can also shift for the better. But for this to happen, we have to actively shape things, get involved and contribute. This is exactly what we will do with your support in 2025!