Aid agencies in race against time after Cyclone Idai

https://www.dw.com/en/aid-agencies-in-race-against-time-after-cyclone-idai/a-48034299

Aid agencies in race against time after Cyclone Idai

Date 23.03.2019

The death toll from Cyclone Idai topped 600 people on Friday, with aid agencies warning much more suffering could be on the way in southeast Africa. Over a week after the powerful storm hit Mozambique and neighboring Zimbabwe and Malawi, survivors now face threat of disease and lack of medical supplies.

"We are running out of time, it is at a critical point here," the United Nations children's agency (UNICEF) chief Henrietta Fore told AFP news agency. She warned hygiene and safe drinking water are absolute priorities.

"There's stagnant water, it's not draining, decomposing bodies, lack of good hygiene and sanitation," Fore said. "We are worried about cholera, about malaria, because of the stagnant water."

According to UNICEF, thousands of people are staying in improvised camps with grossly inadequate living conditions, while hundreds of thousands of children need urgent help.

The death toll will likely increase massively, with thousands believed to have died in Mozambique where flooding has created a 125-kilometer (78-mile) wide lake, devastating an area previously populated by hundreds of thousands of people. The World Food Program (WFP) declared the flood crisis a level three emergency, putting it in the same bracket with Yemen, Syria and South Sudan.

At this stage of the rescue effort, there were almost no survivors being recovered from rooftops and trees, Mozambique's disaster management agency said.
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