Bangladesh cyclone: Now food shortage, disease threatens millions*

Lack of shelter and clean water could kill many more, aid agency warns.

By Andrew Buncombe
Published: 25 November 2007

For the people of Bangladesh, there seems little respite from poverty
and misery, some of it the result of man and much of it the work of nature.

With aid teams still trying to get emergency supplies to those affected
by Cyclone Sidr – a massive storm that struck 10 days ago, killing 3,200
– officials have said up to three million people risk being short of
food for the next six months. The storm, the biggest for more than a
decade, destroyed between 50 and 90 per cent of the region's rice crop.

"Thousands of families are facing the real possibility of a second wave
of deaths that can result from lack of clean water, food, shelter and
medical supplies," said Kelly Stevenson, the Bangladesh director of Save
the Children.

Every year, thousands are killed in Bangladesh in floods or storms. Not
surprisingly, those most at risk are the poor, whose dwellings are the
least substantial and often located in the most vulnerable areas.

Yet sometimes the most basic measures can help. Officials say that the
death toll could have been much higher if the authorities had not acted
to warn people of the impending storm. One of the most basic warning
systems involved dispatching volunteers equipped with megaphones to
cycle around local communities urging people to take shelter.

Indeed, up to 40,000 volunteers with the Red Crescent Society were
involved in warning residents to move into the 1,800 cyclone shelters
and 440 flood shelters set up. As a result, when Sidr struck the
coastline on 15 November, two million people were already taking shelter.

"It's as low-tech as you get ... basically a project centred around
preparing people for disasters by using community-based volunteers who
do everything from street theatre to school education and lectures to
women's groups," said Dhupinder Powar, of the International Federation
of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in Geneva.

The Bangladeshi government has promised that it will be able to feed
more than two million people made homeless and destitute by the storm
with 33lb of rice a month each, starting on 1 December, a programme
expected to last at least four months.