There is a really amazing video (Turkish with English subtitles) from Dr Uçum on the critical role that OpenStreetMap data has played in ensuring high quality public health programming in one of the tent cities for displaced people in Turkey as part of the earthquake response.

The video was originally published by Yer Cizenler.

Have also pasted below the English translation (thanks, once again, to Yer Cizenler) …

Well, hello everyone. I’m Doctor Mehmet Faruk Uçum.

I am the responsible physician in the largest tent city in Kahramanmaraş the KAFUM tent city. It is also known as New Ataturk Park and Kahramanmaraş Fairgrounds.

Here, as the responsible physician, I provide coordination in terms of health, we have set up the family health tent and we continue to vaccinate there. I also do public health work in the field.

During this process, with my friends in the OpenStreetMap community and my friends in Istanbul, we worked together and as a result of this work, we created a map.

I used this map especially during the vaccination process to find out which tent was where, because we really lacked data in this regard. We didn’t know the location of the tents, or which number was where, so we were not able to navigate to the right tents.

Recently again, I have used it to inspect and verify alleged scabies cases within the tents. I have, for example, some tent numbers that are said to have scabies but some of them may be seen wrongly or it is possible that the wrong number is given to us but I found them on the map and took the necessary action.

In public health, we used it again to identify outbreaks… the focus of outbreaks, that is. After marking the tent numbers on the map, we determined which areas had problems, especially for acute gastroenteritis, for example. Again, if there is a problem with viral rash diseases tomorrow, this map will be used for isolation and quarantine activities.

The authorities have asked me for this map I was using and I gave it to them, and they used it to plan the power lines that needed to be installed for the lighting in the tents. The army has used it for public order and it is also used for logistics.

If I am able to complete it during my stay here, we will try to use it for emergency referrals.

So, we used this map for every kind of planning you can think of… for health, for administration, for public order, and it was really one of the most important things I could have done here.

For this, I thank the OpenStreetMap contributors very much, I thank the community very much, I’m glad you exist.

Thank you very much. Take care of yourselves.