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