De seneste dages oversvømmelser i Sri Lanka er værst for de fattigste. De bor nemlig i nogle af landets hårdest ramte områder i de nordlige og østlige dele af landet, og selv uden katastrofer som tørke og oversvømmelse er de i en desperat situation.
MAMADUWA/COLOMBO, 11 January 2013 (IRIN): The Northern, North Central, Eastern and Uva (in the southeast) provinces experienced weeks of heavy rains starting on 16. December.
Flooding, at its height, stranded more than 447.000 people and displaced close to 50.000, according to the government’s Disaster Management Centre (DMC). By the time the deluge (oversvømmelse, red.) eased during the second week of January, 45 people had been killed and eight were listed as missing.
“These are desperate people. Even without droughts and floods, still life would be difficult for them. These disasters just made matters far worse,” said Bob McKerrow head of delegation of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Sri Lanka.
The same regions were hit by Cyclone Nisha flooding in early November that left around 200.000 people stranded and killed seven, destroyed 300 houses and damaged 4700 more units.
Before the twin floods, the northern and eastern regions bore the brunt (tog det værste stød, red.) of a 10-month drought that devastated (ødelagde, red.) livelihoods and crops.
Northern Province is home to some one million people, of whom 471.000 have returned to their homes since the end of a three-decade long civil conflict in May 2009. Jobs and income generation are still scarce in the region.
Poor nutrition levels in north
A nutrition assessment released in June 2012 by UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Food Programme (WFP) and the Ministry of Health showed that nutrition levels in Northern Province, though improved since the end of the conflict, still fell far below national levels.
“When compared with National Nutrition and Food Security Assessment done in 2010, this study shows a higher prevalence of stunting (22,8 percent versus 19,2 percent), wasting (18,3 percent versus 11,7 percent) and underweight children (29,5 percent versus 21,6 percent) in Northern Province,” the report said.
Stunting, or when children are too short for their age group, is a sign of long-term chronic malnutrition, a leading cause of preventable brain damage. Wasting – when children weigh too little for their height and whose tissues are literally “wasting” away – can turn fatal if not treated. If more than 15 percent of children under the age of five in an area are diagnosed as wasting, humanitarians consider it a nutrition emergency.
Læs videre på: http://www.irinnews.org/Report/97220/SRI-LANKA-Floods-drought-exacerbate-vulnerability
Begynd fra: “IFRC’s McKerrow said…”
