More than 40 million people have been affected by flooding and landslides in India, Bangladesh and Nepal as the death toll from the monsoon-related disaster tops 1,200.
Oxfam staff in Bangladesh have reported that some two-thirds of the nation is underwater while in Nepal one region received a month’s worth of rain in just two days.
Meg Quartermaine, Oxfam Australia‘s humanitarian lead, described the scale of the disaster as “staggering” and said the numbers were hard to comprehend.
“Almost double Australia’s population has been affected by this disaster across South Asia,” she said. “More support is needed to help organisations like Oxfam assist the millions of people in need across India, Bangladesh and Nepal.”
The Red Cross said that thousands of villages in the three countries had been cut off and people left without food and clean water for days.
“We are seeing multiple emergencies across the country – the rains have triggered landslides in the hills, whilst we are also seeing widespread flooding in the lower lying areas,” said Dev Ratna Dhakhwa, secretary general of the Nepal Red Cross Society.
“This has led to appalling conditions. Tens of thousands of people have lost their homes, whilst thousands more cannot get clean water and do not have enough food.”
Earlier this week Jagan Chapagain, under secretary general for programmes and operations at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said the situation was “going from bad to worse”.
“In Nepal, as waters finally recede, our teams are finding communities that have lost homes, identity documents – everything. In Bangladesh and India, the number of people affected is rising by the hour as waters rush south.”
He said the floodwaters had also become a breeding ground for deadly diseases such as diarrhoea and malaria. “We fear that other diseases such as dengue and Japanese encephalitis are also on the rise.”
