Twenty one people have died and an estimated 52,000 people are affected across the Solomon Islands, after the worst flooding the country has ever seen.
The Government confirms at least eight of the deaths are children under seven years old.
A water and sanitation expert with UNICEF in Solomon Islands says portable toilets or latrines have to be quickly provided at the evacuation centres for flood victims on Guadalcanal.
Donald Burgess says the evacuation centres, mostly schools, are not designed to cater for the up to two thousand people staying in each facility, and they're in a state of chaos due to deteriorating hygiene levels.
“Because people have just moved with what they were wearing, they don't have anything, you know, they don't have any clothes, they don't have soaps at times knowledge about how to manage hygiene in such kinds of situations. So the camps are becoming places of chaos.”
Health kits were being handed out to 10,000 people sheltering in evacuation centres in the capital Honiara in a bid to prevent disease outbreaks, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
As many as 40 people are still missing in the Pacific island city after the Matanikau burst its banks Thursday following days of heavy rain, creating a torrent of water that swept away entire communities.
Three military cargo planes filled with humanitarian supplies have arrived from New Zealand and Australia this week and OCHA said more aid was beginning to arrive now that Honiara's main airport had reopened.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully announced a further NZ$1.2 million ($1.0 million) in aid funding, bringing the country's total contribution to NZ$1.5 million.
"The additional funding will be used to provide relief supplies and help restore health, water and sanitation systems -- it is now clear that these are areas of critical need."
Save the Children has reported cases of diarrhoea and conjunctivitis in the evacuation centres while the main concern is mosquito-borne dengue fever, which was already prevalent in Honiara before the floods.
Tuesday 08 April 2014
http://www.ntd.tv/en/news/world/asia-pacific/20140408/124214-death-toll-climbs-to-23-and-more-then-40-still-missing-in-solomons-floods.html
0 comments:
Post a Comment