Beneficiaries of emergency tsunami relief in Indonesia and beneficiaries of tsunami aid in India have both identified the Christian relief and development agency, World Vision, as the top provider, according to a recent study.

|TOP|Participants in the study by the Fritz Institute were asked to rate international aid agencies, local relief organisations and their governments who offered relief in their areas, reports Assist News.

World Vision was most frequently named for outstanding service among the 500 aid recipients across five affected provinces in Indonesia.

In India, World Vision was identified as an excellent non-government service provider along with Social Need Education and Human Awareness (SNEHA), an established local agency.

"World Vision is a large organization with the resources and infrastructure that come with it," said World Vision President Richard E. Stearns. "But we keep much of the decision-making power in the communities where we work, so when emergencies happen we can respond quickly and efficiently."

The study also found that in Indonesia, beneficiaries of tsunami aid considered established international relief organisations far superior to the government and local relief groups both in quality of aid and in its distribution.

|AD|International aid groups were ranked highest in terms of quality, maintenance of dignity and fairness in the distribution of aid by a massive 85 per cent of the families polled in Indonesia.

Respondents to the survey in Indonesia and Sri Lanka did, however, credit private local individuals with speed of response within the first 48 hours of the emergency.

The findings of the study coincide with a report published this week by Tearfund, Learn the Lessons, which criticised world governments for a serious lack of investment into disaster reduction measures.

The report said at least 10 per cent of government humanitarian budgets must be redirected to reducing the risks of disaster faced by millions of people in the developing world.

“We are wrongly wedded to aid spending which ‘bandages wounds’ rather than ‘prevents injuries’,” said Tearfund’s Sarah La Trobe, author of the report. “This must now stop. We must re-think and learn the lessons of the tsunami and other recent disasters.”

She added: “Rich countries spend billions of pounds protecting their people from floods, earthquakes and droughts. But we spend very little of our international aid budgets helping poor communities to do the same.”

La Trobe claimed in the report that thousands of lives could have been saved in the tsunami as well as other recent disasters if simple, cost effective measures like evacuation training and storage of food and medical supplies had been put in place to protect vulnerable communities.

“We have heard much about the need for a tsunami early warning system in the Indian Ocean,” she said. “But there are dozens of other steps that we are not taking that would similarly protect millions of people throughout the developing world.”