70,000 children affected by floods in eastern Sri Lanka
Five days' torrential rain in Ampara and Batticaloa districts of Sri Lanka has forced more than 28,000 people to flee their homes. We're already helping families affected by the flooding.
Thursday 10 January 2008
In Ampara district, more than 70,000 children have been affected. Nearly 13,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed. In Batticaloa district, more than 40,000 of those affected by the floods were already living in welfare camps. They'd been forced to flee from their homes because of the conflict between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
"The floods have caused immense damage over a massive area," David Sathananthan, district manager for Ampara said. "Homes have been destroyed, rice crops washed away and fishing businesses disrupted, leaving families struggling to get by. Children are the most vulnerable in any emergency. The big risks in Sri Lanka are a shortage of food and drinking water, and the danger of disease from being around so much dirty water."
Children's education has also been badly affected. Schools are closed because they've been flooded or because they're being used as temporary shelters for homeless families.
What we are doing
We're already distributing supplies, including 1,000 tarpaulins for shelter and 5,000 bed sheets and plastic mats. More staff are on the way to the emergency zone and will be distributing high-energy cereal for 10,000 children. We're also focussed on getting children back to school and providing kits to clean up damaged schools.
We're also responding to floods in Mozambique. These two weather-related emergencies are the first of many we expect to respond to this year. In a report in April 2007 we predicted that, in the next decade, up to 175 million children are likely to be affected every year by natural disasters brought about by climate change.
What you can do
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