More aid needed as Bangladesh prepares for further flooding

Amid warnings that more monsoons could hit flood-ravaged Bangladesh in the coming weeks, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has called on donors for urgent support.

While the floodwaters are currently receding, Bangladesh may well be in for a "cataclysmic flood" in mid-August, when the next monsoon rains will be unable to drain into the waterlogged ground, the agency said.

“What we have seen so far is as bad as any floods in Bangladesh have been, but there may be worse to come, and we need to be ready,” Douglas Casson Coutts, WFP’s Country Representative, said in the capital Dhaka.

Around 25 million Bangladeshis have been affected by the south Asian country’s worst floods in six years – around one million of whom are children living in temporary shelters and exposed to diseases from filthy water.

In April, flash floods destroyed a substantial part of the country’s rice crop, according to WFP. Renewed flooding in mid-July wiped out household food stocks, destroyed fish farms, drowned poultry, and left livestock without fodder. Even day labour jobs have suffered with quarries and brickworks submerged by water. Bangladesh will not have another rice harvest until April.

Urgent funds are needed to supply 60 million water purification tablets, intravenous supplies to manage diarrhoea and cholera outbreaks and food for infants and children.

An estimated 30,000 schools were affected, half of those primary schools that had to be shut down. More than 1,500 schools were converted into temporary flood shelters.

Diseases, such as acute respiratory infection – a major killer of Bangladeshi children – as well as diarrhoea, watery dysentery, jaundice, typhoid and scabies have been reported.

“We are getting strong indications that donors are prepared to be generous,” Mr Casson Coutts said.

“These unprecedented early contributions to the first stage of our operation enable us to get large amounts of food straight to the homeless and vulnerable people.”

(gmcg)