|
 In areas west of the port city of Beira, hundreds of people were
trapped for more than a week after Idai hit, surviving in vast
tracts of submerged land with no access to clean water and shrinking
food supplies.
Water has been slowly receding and there was no rain in Beira on
Monday, meaning some roads have become passable. But the size of the
disaster zone means getting aid to the most needy is still
difficult.
"We are more organized now, after the chaos that we've had, so we're
delivering food and shelter to more people today," Land and
Environment Minister Celso Correia told reporters.
The number of people in makeshift camps had risen by 18,000 to
128,000 since Sunday, he said, adding that the government would
install a prevention and treatment center for cholera in areas
affected by the cyclone.
"We have a lot of diarrhea, but teams are working on the ground to
say whether it is really cholera or not. But as I said there will be
cholera," Correia said.
In Buzi village, southwest of Beira, Reuters reporters saw hundreds
of cyclone victims carrying their few possessions on their heads as
they were moved to a displacement center near the airport, where aid
agencies have set up tents with access to drinking water.
Idai lashed Beira with winds of up to 170 kph (105 mph) on March 14,
then tore inland through Zimbabwe and Malawi, flattening buildings
and killing at least 686 people across the three countries.
United Nations aid chief Mark Lowcock said on Monday that the world
body was appealing for $282 million to fund a response to the
disaster in Mozambique for the next three months. This would cover
relief including health, water and sanitation, he told reporters.
"Mozambique is, we think, the worst hit, but there are very real
needs in the other countries as well," said Lowcock, adding that
appeals for Zimbabwe and Malawi would be launched in the coming
days.
LOSING EVERYTHING
The scale of the disaster has meant aid has been slow to arrive.
Communities near Nhamatanda, around 100 km northwest of Beira, were
due to receive assistance on Monday. On Sunday inhabitants of poor
farming communities in that area told Reuters their food had run out
and rescuers were yet to reach them.
[to top of second column] |
Aid workers distributed maize meal in the Chipinge district of
eastern Zimbabwe, where there was no power or piped water.
"We lost all our perishables after Cyclone Idai," Chipinge resident
Kudakwashe Mapungwana said. "Since then we have no electricity at
all and women are busy buying charcoal which is very expensive."
Correia said the death toll in Mozambique remained roughly unchanged
at 447 on Monday. Zimbabwe's Local Government Minister July Moyo
told state radio that the storm had killed 179 people in Zimbabwe,
up from a previous government estimate of 154, but that 329 people
were still unaccounted for.
In Malawi, the death toll from torrential rains and flooding, some
of which occurred before the cyclone hit, had risen to 60 from 56, a
spokesman at the Ministry of Homeland Security said. The government
was sending relief items by train and truck, he said.
The death toll in Mozambique could rise steeply as receding
floodwaters allow rescuers to access remote areas or if waterborne
diseases like cholera gain a foothold.
Cholera is spread by faeces in sewage-contaminated water or food,
and outbreaks can develop quickly in a humanitarian crisis where
sanitation systems are disrupted. It can kill within hours if left
untreated.
The secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross
and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said after a visit to Mozambique
that the situation there was a "ticking bomb" as regards waterborne
diseases.
Elhadj As Sy said: "I'm raising that alarm because so many of these
waterborne diseases are a great risk but they are preventable."
(Additional reporting by Stephen Eisenhammer, Siphiwe Sibeko, Maria
Vasilyeva and Yvonne Bell in Beira, Philimon Bulawayo in Chipinge
and MacDonald Dzirutwe in Harare, Frank Phiri in Blantyre, Tom Miles
in Geneva, Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Writing by
Alexander Winning; Editing by Hugh Lawson, Andrew Heavens and
Frances Kerry
[© 2019 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2019 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |
