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22 September 2000 A half-finished building in the city of Kulyab is home to 80 multi-children families headed by widows. These women lost their husbands in the recent civil war and moved from remote villages to this city in Khatlon oblast in search of a better life. Their new "home" has no doors nor windows, rough concrete walls and floors, and no water nor gas. The children play on balconies without railings and are running up and down stairs around live electric cables. An empty five-litre paint tin serves as an improvised lavatory. Kulyab was one of the cities visited by a Federation team assessing the situation of people in Tajikistan, where there has been no rainfall for five months and drought is threatening food shortages that could affect up to half the population. It is the worst drought in 74 years – and a disastrous harvest could leave up to three million people short of food, according to a recent assessment by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) .As a result of its assessment, the International Federation has launched an appeal for 22.6 million Swiss francs to assist 250,000 particularly vulnerable people facing famine. The operation will provide urgently- needed food and seeds to 200,000 people in the southern Khatlon oblast and 50,000 people in the Leninabad oblast in the north. They will receive wheat flour (to make bread) and oil, along with 100 kilograms of seeds per family for the next season, so that they can plant 0.5 hectares of land each. "People are not starving today, but in a few weeks time the situation will be different. We have to take our responsibility now and prevent a huge famine before it is too late," says Roger Bracke, leader of the Federation assessment and coordination team which recently visited the worst affected areas. The priority beneficiaries are farmers, who were growing wheat on non-irrigated land, and multi-children families without a breadwinner. The dire situation facing Tajikistan's drought-stricken population is exacerbated by a general high level of poverty and low access to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities. A large part of the population suffers from high levels of malnutrition and anaemia. "We have seen a high level of chronic malnutrition among the population," says Bernd Schell, a nutritionist who recently visited the worst affected areas as part of the Federation assessment team. "The families are on a monotonous and poor diet with meals often being skipped because of lack of food. Meat has become a luxury that is seldom consumed. These people are not yet dying, but slowly starving from hunger," he adds. The high prevelance of anaemia, often triggered by malaria and water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea and typhoid, will further increase during the coming months when access to food will be further limited and patches of stagnant water - resulting from people trying to plant and irrigate small crops of rice - will increasingly spread diseases. To complement the food and seed distributions, the Federation's programme has a health component, including chlorination of drinking water to make it clean, and public awareness campaigns focusing on prevention of diarrhoea, typhoid and malaria. The Federation released 500,000 Swiss francs from its disaster relief emergency fund so the operation could start immediately. |
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Children
from families with no breadwinner are particularly vulnerable, such
as these two girls from Kulyab, who are also suffering from typhoid.
(p5657).
