This
year, China has been battered by a series of devastating typhoons,
floods and droughts. In August 2006 alone, natural disasters
affected the lives of nearly 130 million people throughout the
country. While rural farmers and their families struggle to
recover from torrential rains and severe flooding in southern
China, poor people in northern and western areas are trying
to cope with an unusually severe drought.
In many regions, people have not had running water for two months
and the shortage of drinking water has affected an estimated
19 million residents. As a result, many people have been forced
to turn to polluted and disease-ridden rivers, while those in
mountain villages have to walk long distances to find water.
In response to the situation, local branches of the Red Cross
Society of China in Chongqing and Sichuan have mobilised local
resources to respond to the needs of the thousands of vulnerable
families affected by the drought, which has caused more than
19.5 billion RMB ($2.43 billion USD / €1.91 billion) in
economic losses.
The Red Cross has also been responding to the flooding in southern
China over the past few months, providing first aid, food, blankets,
and tents to people made homeless by the heavy rains. But while
people in southern China are coping with too much water, residents
in other parts of the country don’t have enough.
In Chongqing municipality, the drought has left nearly eight
million people without drinking water, while temperatures in
August hovered around the 40 degrees Celsius mark. In mid-August,
in Qijian County, temperatures soared to 44.5 Celsius –
the hottest in 53 years.
The two-month-long dry spell has also caused two-thirds of the
county’s rivers to dry up while the Chongqing section
of the Yangtze River, China’s longest, has hit its lowest
level in a century.
People in Nandang village in Jiangsu province have been forced
to turn to the nearby Shuiyang River, which is listed as one
of the most dangerous and unhealthy sources of water in the
area by local health officials.
Despite warnings, people have been using untreated water for
bathing and washing, running the risk of contracting a parasitic
worm called the schistosome, which can cause liver, gastrointestinal
tract and bladder diseases.
Sichuan province and Chongqing municipality have been hardest
hit by the drought. The situation is also serious in Hebei,
Inner Mongolia, Jilin, Heilongjian, Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia
provinces and regions. Some of these areas have not seen any
significant rainfall since November 2004 and officials say the
total quantity of rain in some areas last year was less than
200 millimetres.
Storms in Sichuan province have brought scant relief to people
there, although more rain is forecast in the coming days. But
the long-lasting drought has affected millions of hectares of
farmland, with most rice and corn crops withered to the ground.
It is feared that 70 per cent of the rice crop could be destroyed,
which could result in food shortages next year.
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A
resident collects water from a puddle in a village of
Qijiang county in southwestern China's Chongqing municipality,
September 5, 2006. Strong rainstorms occurred on Sunday
in cities over the eastern Sichuan Basin, signalling a
possible end to more than three months of drought, Xinhua
News Agency reported. (Reuters/ Stringer Shanghai/courtesy
www.alertnet.org)
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