CROATIAN RED CROSS TO HELP ELDERLY IN DANUBE REGION

( Editorial: --> 7357 ) ZAGREB, March 5 (Hina) - A project aiding more than 10,000 people in Croatia's liberated territories has been fully taken over by the Croatian Red Cross (HCK), with the financial support of its Dutch and Danish sister organisations. The project "Saving Lives" was begun in September 1995 by the HCK in cooperation with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRCRCS) aimed at helping the most disadvantaged, mostly elderly and infirm people, in the regions of Kordun, Banovina, Lika and the Dalmatian hinterland. On Thursday HCK director Nenad Javornik told a press conference in Zagreb the Croatian Red Cross had fully taken over the project since February. Ten mobile Red Cross teams provides beneficiaries help in the home, distribute humanitarian aid, food and medicine, offer technical help, provide transportation to medical facilities and other services. Answering a journalist's question, Javornik said the HCK, with the assistance of the international community, would start similar humanitarian activities in Vukovar and Beli Manastir in the Danube River region. The Croatian President's adviser for humanitarian issues, Slobodan Lang, also read a joint appeal by the HCK sent to the International Committee of the Red Cross and the IFRCRCS, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Health Organisation and American senator Robert Dole for protecting and enabling the work of hospitals in Yugoslavia's troubled Kosovo province. (Hina) mm mb /jn 051706 MET mar 98