Aid Alarm as Asian Floods Impact 30 Million
AMSTERDAM, Aug 9 (OneWorld) - Amid United Nations warnings of an impending health crisis, calls from humanitarian groups are on the rise to help millions of South Asians affected by torrential rains and devastating flooding.
The floods have wiped out thousands of villages in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, leaving behind more than 30 million people in dire need of food, drinking water, medicine, and shelter. International relief organizations such as ActionAid, Christian Aid, Oxfam International, and various UN agencies, have described the flooding as unprecedented and the worst in living memory. "We have never witnessed this before," said Anand Kumar of Christian Aid in India. "The monsoon season usually starts in late August, but this year we have already had 15 days of sustained rain." Reports from the region suggest the intense involvement of aid and relief organizations in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, but the scale of the disaster has dwarfed their efforts. "Entire villages are days away from a health crisis if people are not reached," said Marzio Babille, a UNICEF official, who thinks stagnant waters left by the floods could turn into "a lethal breeding ground for diarrhea and waterborne diseases at potential epidemic levels." UN reports from the region point out that, in India alone, no less than 20 million people are vulnerable to hunger and disease as a result of the flooding. Most are in the states of Assam, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh. In neighboring Bangladesh, some 8 million are believed to be affected while in Nepal the number of victims is estimated to be around 300,000. According to UNICEF, children, who make up 40 percent of South Asia's population, are particularly vulnerable to the diseases that are expected to propagate now that most water sources in affected areas are either contaminated or submerged. ActionAid said in the Indian state of Bihar flood victims have complained that too often the food packets dropped by government helicopters only reached villages in the media spotlight, and that many were unable to eat for days. "Bihar's poorest people, especially women and children, are living through the worst nightmare," said ActionAid's P.V. Unnikrishnan, who is responsible for planning emergency relief operations. ActionAid and its local partner organizations are distributing food, shelter material, and medicines in the four worst-hit districts of Sitamarhi, Samastipur, Muzaffarpur, and East Champaran. The relief group said Tuesday there was also extensive flooding in Godchiroli district in the western state of Maharashtra, adding that, before the rains, farmers had been committing suicide rather than face ruin by drought. "I was there last week and agricultural communities were fearing drought," said Kamini Ranjit Kapadia, ActionAid's staffer in Maharashtra. "Now there is flooding. Crops have been destroyed, but this time by too much rather than too little water." While India, Bangladesh, and Nepal are still reeling from flash flooding, weather forecasts for the region suggest that people in Pakistan are also likely to see heavy rains in the coming days. Last June, in the southern part of the country, more than 2 million people were affected by cyclone Yemyin. Many experts see the devastation caused by floods in South Asia as partial affects of climate change and say that such happenings are likely to be more frequent in the coming years. This summer weather extremes also took place in Europe. There was an intense heat wave that people in the south and central parts of the continent had never experienced before, while heavy rains continued for days in northern Europe. Wildfires in southern and central Europe are said to have destroyed tens of thousands of acres of forests. And from May to July, rainfall broke all records back to 1776. Official estimates put the damage from heavy rains at more than $6 billion. The current wave of weather extremes is against the historical norm and is a precursor to much greater weather variability as global warming transforms the planet, according to the UN's World Meteorological Organization. Last February, in a comprehensive report, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also warned of heavy flooding due to climate change. In line with the IPCC's findings, the meteorological organization says that, worldwide, January and April were the warmest months ever recorded. "Climate change projections indicate it to be very likely that hot extremes, heat waves, and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent," the organization said. ....................................................................................
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