Fears of disease outbreaks in flood-ravaged Manila
Updated
Two days after Tropical Storm Ketsana struck the Philippines, sending six metre floods surging through Manila, the capital is a disaster zone. While the floods have receded somewhat, parts of the city are still underwater; the rest is under several feet of stinking mud. Nearly two million homes were inundated, and around 400,000 people are homeless. They've crowded into schools, churches and gyms and President Gloria Arroyo's given parts of her Malacanang palace for extra space.
More than 12,000 people have been rescued, but more may still be stranded, and with colds and exposure already hitting children and the elderly, aid agencies are scrambling to get food, clean water and medicine to a desperate city.
UNICEF has opened an international appeal, and donations can be made at www.unicef.org/philippines
Presenter: Corinne Podger
Speaker: Vanessa Tobin, Philippines country representative, UNICEF
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TOBIN: There still may be people out there that do need to be rescued, particularly in the outlying areas, I know that there've been magnificent efforts by the National Disaster Co-ordination Council but this is very widespread, it's not just of course in metro Manila, you've got 20 provinces that are affected, so there may be other pockets in other areas, in other provinces where people may also need more assistance too.
PODGER: Now the UNICEF teams have been out assessing the scale of the disaster, what is the situation as you understand it at the moment in the city?
TOBIN: Situation is changing virtually daily, yesterday when we went out, there were a lot of people, the numbers were going up rapidly on the evacuation centres and today the numbers are going down because of course people are moving back into their houses the minute the water recedes, they're starting to clean out their houses and they're moving back in but the actual number of evacuation centres is going up. There's 600 evacuation centres at the moment, there's about 370 odd people within evacuation centres and the total number of people now impacted, the Disaster Co-ordination Council thinks it's about nearly 2 million that's been affected by the flooding. Water, health needs right now, are extremely important.
We're worried about obviously ensuring the people have enough clean water, since the power is back up in many of the areas, having enough water is not so much of an issue it was even yesterday, because yesterday we had shortages of water in the areas that we were visiting but today the water is back up and running in many areas and Manila Water has been operating tankers into areas where this is needed, so the real energy now is ensuring that they now have clean water, they're disinfecting the water that they're drinking to stop diarrhoeal diseases, which I think is sufficient water kits provided that should be able to ensure that we don't have any disease outbreak, also ofcourse to ensure that we don't have any pneumonia, if people don't have enough blankets, there's been a lot of distribution by governments in terms of blankets, of utensils, tarpaulins, to ensure that those who've gone around the evacuation centres, The Disaster Co-ordination Council with the Department of Welfare focussing on getting it out to those who've gone back to their houses.
PODGER: We're hearing very dire stories of the conditions in some of the evacuation centres of 300 people having to share a single toilet and also a lot of very hungry people. What is the situation in terms of food?
TOBIN: WFT has been working closely with Social Welfare at the moment to get the food needs met, and they've been also of course appealing for funds, we're appealing for funds at the moment, we're putting an immediate needs document out to get support, particularly on the water side but also on the health needs, in terms of essential drugs, in terms of other needs that we may have in terms of any vaccines that may need to go out to the areas as well although we're redirecting some of our existing supplies as well but I know that on the food side, the WFT has been working closely with the government to ensure that the needs are being met as quickly as possible. In total in the two days, we've visited now about 12, 15 areas within metro Manila, so we've got a good idea which areas don't require assistance and which require more assistance.
PODGER: The Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro warned that things could get a lot worse if aids supplies ran out, is there enough help arriving?
TOBIN: One of our concerns on the water sides, is if we don't get water purification basic kits into evacuation centres, out to houses as well as quickly as possible, the danger is that they'll drink dirt, that you'll have the factor of water borne diseases and even for the blankets, utensils and others to ensure, because we do have the risk of pneumonia. A lot of children at the moment, they're wet, they're cold, families don't have enough to keep them warm, so ensuring that we stop any disease outbreaks at this point is the vital thing that has to be done now.
PODGER: The government really did come in for a lot of criticism, when this storm broke that it didn't warn people in advance or give them any idea of how ferocious it would be. Is there a sense now in Manila that the government is stepping up and is providing for the needs of the people?
TOBIN: I think they're doing their absolute best, this is so widespread and of course remember it's twice the amount of rain that dropped during the time of Hurricane Katrina, it was a heck of a lot of rain and there are flood warnings that do go out but also the proximity of the number of episodes of tropical storms, there is another one on its way in here at the moment, which could exacerbate the situation further.
