Kenya on Wednesday appealed for aid to help hundreds of thousands of people hit by devastating and deadly floods across the country, triggered by unusually heavy seasonal rains.
As rains continued to pound north and coastal Kenya, authorities made a national appeal for almost $8-million to help about 300 000 people who are affected by the floods, which have so far killed 23 people.
”We are launching an appeal to assist 300 000 beneficiaries for three months. The appeal is based on the current situation in which many districts, especially the coastal regions, have been badly hit,” Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) secretary general Abbas Gulled told a press conference.
Gulled said the appeal figure, which was earlier estimated to be $2,1-million, had to be revised because ”there were areas where infrastructure was there, but now we have no access at all”.
The society’s disaster response chief Abdi Ahmed said the funds would be used for emergency response and rehabilitation of ruined infrastructure.
The society said the floods had directly affected at least 80 000 people across the country, but the overall figure could be much higher that the estimated 300 000.
On the weekend, at least six people, including a schoolgirl, were swept away and drowned by raging waters around the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa and the north-eastern town of Garissa, bringing the death toll to 23 since the rains started in October.
In the coastal region, where roads, bridges and farmlands were swept away, military helicopters continued to ferry relief supplies to tens of thousands of displaced people.
”Flooding is also expected to occur in the traditional flood-prone areas of western Kenya, with rivers threatening to break their banks,” KRCS said in a statement.
”The floods pose a threat of an outbreak of cholera, malaria, typhoid and other waterborne diseases, while thousands of people need urgent food, shelter, medicine and other essential assistance,” it said.
Officials said flood water continued to wreck havoc at United Nations camps for Somali refugees in north-east Kenya, where at least two people, a pregnant woman and a young child, have died, and at least 13 000 people were left homeless.
The floods are not limited to Kenya, where thousands of environmentalists and government delegates attending the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in the capital mulled ways of addressing climate change that many blame for altering weather patterns and causing deadly drought-flood cycles.
The onset of rains has compounded problems across the Horn of Africa, already brought by a recent killer drought, since parched soil inundating the worst-affected areas is unable to absorb the water, officials said.
In Somalia, floods have killed at least 42 and displaced 50 000 people over the past two weeks, compounding the misery affecting millions in the lawless Horn of Africa nation.
The UN Office for Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs warned that the floods could affect up to a million people in the lawless African nation over the coming weeks. — Sapa-AFP