Flooding victims reach for help from the skies

Relief agencies drop food, water and medicines to flood-ravaged areas of South Asia

Thursday August 9th, 2007

Aid workers are taking advantage of a brief lull in the rains to assist the areas inundated by record monsoon flooding. But the demand far outstrips relief supplies and thousands of villages remain submerged. Bangladesh and Nepal have received aid from the UN World Food Program and UNICEF but the agencies have received no official requests from India. An editorial in the Hindustan Times argues that authorities in northern India's Uttar Pradesh, Assam and Bihar states should have done much more before hundreds of people died and millions were displaced. The editorial states "Floods are nothing new in these areas. It is the intensity of the floods that differ from year to year. The state governments' lack of preparedness is criminal."

In an interview with APTN, the UN's regional health boss describes the staggering humanitarian crisis facing flood refugees and relief workers.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• therealnews
• asia
• flood
• victims

[aksh123]

Where is our government.. i hate to point fingers but Our corrupted Political leaders have conveniently chosen to IGNORE DISASTER MANAGMENT PROGRAMS, NATIONAL SECURITY & Improvement of India in every other area that matters other than feeding their own families and bank balances

[curien1000]

Thanks for sharing. This sort of thing gets so little coverage in the US...

[professor2442]

I applaud the idea behind RealNews, but these stories need to be more complete than what the corporate news might tell us. How does this flood fit with the historic pattern of flooding in the area? What global weather changes are indicated? What sorts of governments do these nations have? Does the failure of domestic relief agencies stem from political incompetence and/or corruption? If so, how? Etc.

[Templaria]

Televison stations in Canada are not giving significant news on floods all over the world, why ?

No one in the media seems to care about helping these populations why ?

[OttoMaddock]

Those poor people have a New Orleans style flood on a weekly basis, it seems.

[CrazyforCongress]

South Asia is one of the most vulnerable areas to climate change, and the potentially devastating effects of constant flooding there will have repercussions around the world. There are solutions, but we need to all start working together to better address this problem.