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Day 9, Saturday

We departed from Dhaka on Thursday night and travelled to Pirojpur with Mr. Shah Chowdhury, who works on RIC’s education programme and John Cobb, the photographer. After several hours on the road and a couple of hours ferry ride, we arrived late in the evening at a government guesthouse and met with Mr. Sheikh Moinur Rahman, the internal auditor, who briefed us and then we planned out the field trip.

When we arrived at our accommodation, I was given the VIP suite, which had the only working electric light in the entire building and I shared it with the mother of all cockroaches!

The next day was an early start and we headed out to RIC’s office to meet the team. The office was a hive of activity. Staff have been working around the clock to receive goods, prepare relief packs, verify beneficiary lists and organise distributions. Staff from the Dhaka office have been coming down on rotation to oversee and support the local team. Some colleagues have gone without sufficient sleep for two weeks running.

We drove to Nazirpur to see three back to back distributions of the Help the Aged/HelpAge International relief packs and DFID funded blankets. By the time we reached the RIC office, people were already lining up outside, patiently waiting for the distribution to begin. It was immediately apparent that the operation is well organised. Behind the office was a warehouse/store. Relief items were brought to the front for distribution by ‘human chain’. More than 1300 packs were distributed in total.

The process is quite comprehensive. Older People’s Associations in the area were involved in identifying the most vulnerable Older Person headed households in collaboration with RIC staff. These lists were crosschecked and approved by the local authorities.

Beneficiaries were given tokens and told the date, time and venue of the distributions. Those older people who were frail or had mobility problems brought younger family members or friends along to carry the relief items and were served at the head of the queue. Each person had to present his or her token and then signed for the relief, usually by fingerprint and then he or she received the goods and left for home. The oldest lady I saw was 105 years old!

The first two distributions went really smoothly and quickly. The third one, which took place later in the afternoon became a bit more rowdy. Word had spread that a distribution was going down and of course many people in need turned up. RIC staff and the local authorities handled the situation well. This illustrates the challenge of ‘targeting’ vulnerable groups when everyone is in dire need of basic assistance. I have often experienced similar situations in other emergencies.

One of the reasons here is that Pirojpur district is underserved which is why the Help the Aged/HelpAge International relief packs were particularly welcome and timely.

Please support us by donating to this cause

Click Play to see pictures of RIC Staff distribute blankets and relief packs

Day 7, Wednesday, Midnight.

It was midnight in Dhaka and the plane carrying the consignment of relief goods had finally arrived. Haseeb Khan and I were there along with the British High Commissioner, Mr Anwar Choudhury, a Bangladeshi Government Minister and officials from DFID, CARE and Save the Children.

Several journalists were present; I think mostly Bangladeshi TV
stations and newspapers. After several shots of us in front of the plane while the plane was unloaded, (over 43,000 blankets and 24,000 jerrycans....a lot of bales and boxes), there was a TV interview. DFID invited me to do a 'piece to camera' on behalf of all the NGOs present.

I spoke about HelpAge International, Help the Aged, our strong local partner the Resource Integration Centre, RIC's staff and field teams; explained when we would pick up the items today by truck and distribute in Pirojpur and Bagerhat; highlighted older people issues in this emergency, particularly with the onset of winter. The blankets that arrived today will definitely help a lot of older people suffering from age related illnesses like arthritis. I also mentioned the positive role the Older People’s Associations are playing in the relief phase in identifying the most vulnerable older people headed families in close collaboration with the local authorities and other agencies.

By 1.00am it was over.

The guys at RIC immediately started packing the consignment we received tonight. Meanwhile, another consignment of food relief was ready to deliver. The food items will ensure that 5000 families in the pirojpur district (which saw more than 350 dead and 900 injured) will now be able to eat three times a day for a week.

The cyclone completely destroyed their seasonal crop of 'aman' rice so for the next few months they will get no food. It is very important that we support those affected by the cyclone during this time.


Coming Soon! Read about the actual distributions and see photos of how HelpAge International, RIC and Help the Aged are making a difference.

Please support us by donating to the DEC Appeal.

Day 6, Wednesday

The relief distributions are still going on and today the field team managed to distribute 400 food packs.

The older people are leading the relief efforts in some areas. These ordinary grandpas and grandmas have risen to this challenge in an extraordinary manner.

One grandfather of two small children, Jogendranath Halder (right) from the Pirojpur zilla (district), has started to rebuild his house which was severely damaged in cyclone SIDR. His only complaint is that with the lack of food and energy it is hard for him to fix the house properly.

Even though Jogendranath lost his right eyesight to typhoid, he used to work as a day laborer before the cyclone hit. Now with everything around him destroyed, work is nearly impossible to find. Jogendranath needs regular medication and better treatment for his gout pain and left eyesight, which is also gradually deteriorating day by day. I hope the DEC appeal has a good response so that we can help out.

Tutul from RIC, a health specialist from another organization and I went to the Health Cluster meeting this morning. Its exciting for me to see cluster meeting working in the field as in London we have been working with the UN on the cluster method of coordination in emergencies.

The government reported that Bagerhat, where our field team have been deployed for 10 days now, is the most affected district for cases of diarrhoea, eye and skin infections and TB. They highlighted the issue of poor/inadequate coordination in the health sector at all levels, Government Offices, NGOs and INGOs and donors.

I asked the panel and agencies to what extent the government health service, INGOs and NGOs were disaggregating data by age and gender in their needs assessments and catering for the specific needs of older people.

Dr Waleed Ikram from IMC suggested that the government should look at providing a simple format/process for disease early warning which includes data disaggregation by age and gender as an essential component (in DRR) because everyone knows that in reality the elderly and young children are often the hardest hit by disaster and prone to disease.

It’s 9pm now and as I struggle to answer all the emails from London, I’m getting vibes from London that the DEC appeal won’t raise as much money as hoped for so we will need to come up with a Plan B… There was a plane full of relief goods supposed to arrive tonight… But like always it will be late and now land at midnight, so no sleep for us before the field trip tomorrow... But hey with no communications and no accommodation in the field I hope I can sleep while traveling!




Coming Soon! Read what happens when the plane of relief goods finally lands!

Visit http://www.helpage.org/ for more on the cyclone in Bangladesh

Day 4, Monday

Situation in the field

Tofazzel Hossain Monjul, who normally works on the Realising the Rights of Older People programme and is also RIC’s treasurer returned from the field (Pirojpur) on Sunday. Monjul said that it was hard to differentiate the needs of older people from the general population due largely to the lack of disaggregated data at local authority level. However, older people have consistently featured in media stories, which have emphasized their vulnerability.

He reports that the government is sending rice to some areas but it is not distributing non-food items like clothing, cooking utensils etc. RIC and some smaller local NGOs are providing some clothes and other non-food items and new teams are arriving in the area every day.

Water, Sanitation and Housing
Days after the cyclone there are still potable water shortages as there is not enough coverage. The UK Disasters Emergency Committee is saying that the task of rebuilding all the houses lost to the cyclone is greater than rebuilding Birmingham… but given that more than half a million houses have been completely wiped out and another million affected severely I would say it is more like rebuilding Birmingham and Manchester.

Coordination
A bridge collapsed today, killing one person and injuring others, when crowds surged forward for a relief distribution. Union officials have lists but people don’t trust them. Some NGOs are going their own way and doing their own thing. Likewise with private companies who are not engaging with the local authorities or INGOS/NGOs.

In contrast RIC is working well with CARE International and UNDP. A UNDP team member visited RIC’s field team in order to assess them for the next round of distributions.

Infrastructure
It is reported that the electricity supply will take one month(!) to rehabilitate. Back home a month without electricity would have caused a scandal but till now the world doesn’t seem to be shocked by the devastation here.

Health
There is little access to health generally in these areas. Diarrhoea outbreaks have been reported and some medical teams are giving out public health messages and simple medicines.

Day 1, Friday

Darkness gives way to dawn… It’s three in the morning as we land at the Zia International Airport in Dhaka. Thankfully, there is electricity here but reports coming in have suggested that most of Dhaka is having to do without it. The infrastructure of the city of 11 million is still recovering from the battering it took just a few days before.

I arrived at the hotel in Dhaka at 4 in the morning, grabbed a few hours’ sleep then started work right away with a meeting from 9.30 onwards. By the time I arrived, our partner in Bangladesh, the Resource Integration Centre (RIC) had already been responding to the disaster. Within four days of the cyclone they had distributed dry food rations to over 2,000 families. I started by attending briefings from Haseeb Khan, the Executive Director and Razeeb Tutul, the Programme Manager of RIC, who introduced me to their staff team.

Based on initial assessments RIC has identified 65,000 older people and their families who are in need of assistance to meet their basic needs (health, food, water and shelter) and support to rebuild their businesses and lives following the devastation. It will be a real challenge to raise enough money to help these vulnerable older people. To increase coordination and make our response more effective we are planning to partner with other organisations.

Already there are reports of outbreaks of diarrhoea and other health concerns in the national newspapers today.

Even though the field team has been working flat out, with very little sleep, packaging relief items into boxes all night and distributing them in the day, their commitment to our mission is still as strong as ever.

RIC and HelpAge International will be integrating disaster risk reduction with our response and hopefully in the future this will reduce the impact of such disasters. We are now also preparing for a visit by a photographer who will spend a few days visiting project areas in order to collect photos and stories so that we can get word of this tremendous tragedy out to the world.