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10th September, 2009
More than 600,000 people have been affected by floods in West Africa with crops and infrastructure destroyed in an area already hard-hit by poverty, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Almost 160 people have died since June with Sierra Leona, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Niger the hardest hit nations.
Hervé Ludovic de Lys, head of the OCHA in West Africa, described the situation as “very worrisome” and said it further weakened already impoverished peoples.
“Natural disasters have lasting consequences that will have an impact for decades to come and take us back to square one in terms of the fight against poverty.”
The UN World Food Programme has started distributing food to more than 100,000 people in Burkina Faso, Niger and Mauritania.
This years floods follow torrential rains in 2007 when some 300 people died and 800,000 others were affected.
~ www.un.org
- DAVID ADAMS
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