UN helps Guinea to avert water-borne epidemics after heavy flooding

Seeking to prevent cholera and typhoid outbreaks following severe flooding in the Kindia region of Guinea, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) will distribute water purification tablets and help local authorities take other measures to treat the water supply.

“Despite warnings from the local authorities, people continue to consume contaminated water and food recovered from stagnant ponds,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said today. “The local people are less and less able to confront the situation and their means of subsistence decrease further each day.”

Some 1,200 people were directly affected by flood damage. “The large amount of stagnant water renders the people particularly vulnerable to illnesses such as malaria and acute respiratory ailments,” OCHA added.

Health care, water treatment, food, blankets, kitchen utensils are among the priority needs for Kindia, 135 kilometres inland from Conakry, the capital, and the Government does not have sufficient means to respond, OCHA said, adding that it had released $55,000 from its Emergency Cash Grant mechanism.

These funds will be used by the UN World Health Organization (WHO), the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the Guinean Red Cross to buy food and non-food supplies.