Bangladesh 01/07

Bangladesh floods

August 16, 2007

Information provided ACT member Norwegian Church Aid (NCA)

More monsoon rain, cholera, typhoid fever and diarrhoea are killing the flood victims in Bangladesh.Millions of people are homeless and 232,000 are now living in refugee camps. “The flood victims need all the help they can get”, said Steffen Rasmussen, Norwegian Church Aid’s (NCA) regional representative in south Asia.

The flood in Bangladesh officially affects 10.3 million people in 39 districts. Over 800,000 families have had their homes destroyed, while 61,000 houses have so far been recorded vanished in the water.

It is mainly the poorest peasants that are affected, people that are completely dependent on cultivated land to survive. Large areas are destroyed because of the flood, and to survive, most peasants have to buy food on tick or beg.

“Most of the ones we meet have neither food, money or roof over their heads. Most of them are sick after been drinking contaminated water, and therefore need medicines,” says Rasmussen.

Norwegian Church Aid and local partner organisation Christian Commision for Development in Bangladesh (CCDB), is preparing new aid operations with food and medicines, which in a few days will be handed out in the Harirampur-district, north of the capital city Dakha.

Contaminated water has now affected 54,000 with diarrhoea, and the numbers are rising rapidly. Only yesterday, 46 people died, mainly of the water-born diseases. Ten thousands have been affected by cholera, typhoid fever, pneumonia and also serious eye and skin infections. Just a handful of these people are receiving the necessary treatment.

The government says they are doing everything they can while receiving help from 3,000 medical teams and 28 mobile emergency units who are working around the clock.

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