Cyclone survivors in Bangladesh face epidemic threat

By DPA

Dhaka/Geneva : Hundreds of thousands of people in southern Bangladesh are facing the threat of epidemics after surviving cyclone Sidr that devastated parts of the country a week ago, Bangladeshi media and the UN stated Friday.


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Veronique Taveau, spokeswoman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, said that children were particularly vulnerable.

Speaking to journalists in Geneva, she said “Millions of children are at risk if humanitarian help does not arrive as quickly as possible. The risk of illness and epidemic is very high.”

Of the 6 million people affected, half of them were children and 600,000 of them were under five, according to UNICEF.

“The weak state of a number of these children, malnutrition, a lack of access to basic health care could bring about an even greater catastrophe,” she said.

Local media quoting sources from Dhaka’s Cholera Hospital reported that the number of child diarrhoea patients shot up Friday as waterborne epidemics spread.

Sidr struck the Bangladesh coast on November 15-16, killing several thousand, with a number of children losing one or both parents.

In addition, roads and transport links were wiped out. As a result large numbers of people are yet to be reached.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 2.6 million people in nine out of 30 badly affected regions assessed so far needed urgent help because of contaminated water supplies and lack of shelter.

OCHA said the latest government figures put the death toll at 2,997 with a further 1,724 missing and more than 34,000 injured.

OCHA spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs compared the scenes to a mini tsunami saying the images of coastal destruction were like the 2004 Tsunami tragedy that struck countries round the Indian Ocean.

Donor countries were beginning to respond to the emergency with up to $200 million in aid promised to the government in Bangladesh.

The UN Central Emergency Relief Fund (CERF) had released another $6 million bringing the sum made available for urgent aid so far to $15 million.

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