Epidemias danger, ‘urgent to intervene on hygienic conditions’
Unexpected torrential rains have aggravated the emergency situation in which there are thousands of people who remained homeless after the Myanmar earthquake on March 28, forcing people to risk their lives looking for refuge in damaged buildings. Jagat Patnaik, responsible for the Asia region of Actionaid, reports it.
“Thousands of people who have lost their homes are sleeping outdoors or in improvised shelters – he said – often using only plastic sheets, which offer poor protection against monspoons”. Thus also increases the diseases transmitted by the water, such as cholera and diarrhea, “which now represent a serious threat due to the serious lack of toilet-health services”. In the area of Lake Inle, where thousands of people were forced to live on boats after the collapse of their homes in the lake, the local humanitarian teams partner of Actionid have reported that about 600 people share a single bathroom in a monastery.
Aung min naing, director of the Future Light Youth Development Organization program, one of the associations with which Actionid a sagaing works confirms that “the pouring rain is a disaster in the disaster for thousands of families who have lost everything in the earthquake. The bamboo shelters we have built have been designed to offer shadow with an intense heat – not to resist the racing of this intensity”.
An appeal, therefore, to intervene urgently “to improve the hygienic conditions before the situation becomes unmanageable”.
