Climate change. The slow onset disaster seriously threatening public health.
Over the course of the 11 days that world leaders try to agree on a global deal in Copenhagen, Merlin is highlighting three countries where we are tackling the health impact of natural disasters, drought and the food crisis.
Myanmar (Burma)
Photo: Destruction caused by Cyclone Nargis which devastated the Irrawaddy Delta, Myanmar (Burma) in May 2008.
The global scale and impact of natural disasters is at an unprecedented level, and about two thirds are thought to be climate-related.
In 2007, an estimated 201 million people were affected by natural disasters with many millions more affected since then.
The extreme wind, rain, and 3.5m high tidal surge caused by Cyclone Nargis which hit Myanmar in May 2008, killed at least 140,000 people and severely affected a further 2.4 million, devastating livelihoods and compounding an already challenging health situation.
Hla Hla Soe, 19, was nine months pregnant with her first child when Cyclone Nargis struck her village with fierce and deadly force.
“We had nowhere to go, so we climbed up a large tree,” Soe says. Along with seven family members, Soe clung to the branches of the same tree from 3pm in the afternoon until the following dawn. When the storm finally subsided, they had all miraculously survived, but their home, village and fish farms were destroyed.
Merlin has been working in Myanmar (Burma) since 2004. Alongside our ongoing work to rebuild and strengthen health services, Merlin is implementing a programme designed to protect 45,000 people in 61 communities from future disasters.
We are helping communities to understand the risks they face and to be better prepared, for example, training them to understand the information provided in radio weather reports and establishing early warning systems and evacuation plans.
 Find out more about our work in Myanmar (Burma)
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Darfur
Photo: Women and children sit under the shade of a tree at one of Merlin’s mobile clinics in a village in Darfur.
Drought, brought on by years of failed rains, has left East Africa in a chronic food crisis.
The World Health Organisation considers anything above a 15 per cent malnutrition rate to be an emergency. In Darfur, more than 20 per cent of people suffer from acute malnutrition.
Merlin delivers comprehensive essential health care, focusing on mothers and children, disease prevention and health education, through a network of static and mobile clinics throughout the Darfur region.
We are currently also scaling up our nutritional work, by providing a high calorie paste to combat the lack of nutritional food for example, to ensure those most at risk are getting the help they desperately need.
We are especially addressing the health and nutritional needs of children under five in a camp, which is home to over 90,000 internally displaced people as well as several thousand elsewhere.
“The hardest part of my job is dealing with malnutrition when there is no food available” - a nurse working in a Merlin-supported health clinic in Darfur.
Find out more about our work in Darfur
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Kenya
Photo: This dry desert fruit called eengol has become the main source of food for many families who have lost their livestock and crops to drought. Turkana, Kenya. (Photo: Frederic Courbet)
Persistent drought is compounding the chronic food crisis faced by many thousands of Kenyans.
In the past year, rates of malnutrition have remained consistently high, with more than one fifth of children in parts of northern Kenya suffering from acute malnutrition.
This condition leaves children more vulnerable to diseases such as malaria, diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections, and in many cases, they become even too weak to feed.
Alex Cottin, Regional Director of Merlin USA recently visited Merlin’s programmes in Turkana, northern Kenya, and found that:
“The prolonged drought has forced as many as 50,000 pastoralist families to move their animals and change their migration patterns in search of water and pasture. To put things into perspective, now people here often have to walk over 20 miles to search for water.”
Merlin is offering regular check ups and treatment for vulnerable children, nutrition education for mothers and nutritional supplements in the form of a high calorie paste wherever needed.
We are also training village volunteers to detect the early signs of malnutrition as part of our wider programme to help communities be better prepared and refer cases for support.
Find out more about our work in Kenya
Together we can help save more lives: Please donate now |