June 24. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned this Friday that 3.5 million children in Bangladesh need immediate access to drinking water due to the deterioration of the humanitarian situation as a result of the crisis unleashed by the floods in the north from the country.
“At this very moment, 3.5 million children are in urgent need of safe drinking water. This is a staggering two million more children than just a few days ago,” the UN agency warned.
UNICEF representative in Bangladesh, Sheldon Yett warns, in this sense, that “huge areas” of the country “are completely under water and are disconnected from the supply of drinking water and food.”
Cases of diarrhea and other deadly diseases are rising steadily, with 2,700 cases recorded as of Tuesday this week, as 40,000 water points and nearly 50,000 toilets have been damaged.
The crisis has spread to the field of education because, according to estimates by the organization, “more than 5,000 schools and learning centers are submerged” and many more schools in the country remain closed “at a time when children were beginning to recover from the school closure caused by the pandemic.
In total, almost half a million people have been evacuated to overcrowded evacuation centers that are not equipped to ensure the safety of women and children.
Around 2,000 children were already suffering from severe acute malnutrition before the floods in the affected areas. Hundreds of them need urgent treatment, which has been interrupted.
Despite the aid efforts of UNICEF Bangladesh -which has delivered 1,750,000 water purification tablets and some 9,000 drums to the population-, its manager recalls that the fund urgently needs 2.5 million dollars (slightly more than two million euros) in contributions for the emergency response.
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