Disease threatens to worsen an already desperate situation in Fiji, where thousands of lives have been devastated in the wake of the deadly Super Cyclone Yasa, a Fiji government official said yesterday.
Relief agencies rushed food and clean water to areas where the storm on Thursday last week smashed into the northern islands of the South Pacific nation, forcing more than 23,000 people to flee their homes.
Four people died and entire villages were wiped out by the storm, with crops and livestock destroyed.
Photo: AFP / Ponipate / IFRC
Agriculture experts are being sent to hard-hit areas to help farmers dispose of dead livestock to reduce the risk of disease, Fijian National Disaster Management Office Director Vasiti Soko said.
The country is prone to violent storms at this time of year, with Cyclone Winston killing 44 people when it slammed into the islands in 2016.
“We’re going to be doing a lot of work around shelter and the provision of clean water because we have seen the diseases that follow these cyclones ... leptospirosis, diarrhea, dengue, and especially if access to hospitals is limited,” Fiji Red Cross director-general Ilisapeci Rokotunidau said.
“From our experience from Winston, three months after Winston, one of the biggest things was malnutrition,” Rokotunidau added.
Fijian authorities on Saturday estimated the damage from the storm in the hundreds of millions of US dollars, with one senior aid worker comparing the destruction to a war zone.
The Red Cross is now focused on providing relief to Bua and other areas in the north of Fiji hit hard by the storm.
One local man who had lost his job in the major city of Nadi due to the COVID-19 pandemic and returned to Bua to rebuild his life was reported to have lost all his belongng after the super cyclone hit.
“Now, everything is gone and he is saying: ‘There is no more use in living,’” Rokotunidau said.
“We suspect that is the beginning of stories we will be hearing,” she added.
“The sad thing for a lot of people is ‘what now?’” Rokotunidau said. “Christmas is supposed to be a happy time of year and this is going to be a very dismal one.”
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