World Vision reaches 4000 families in the severely affected areas of Visayas and Mindana

Two weeks after Typhoon Odette (international name Rai) left massive destruction, thousands displaced and hundreds of dead along its path, child-focused humanitarian agency World Vision reaches around 4,000 families as it intensifies its emergency relief response in the typhoon-stricken provinces of Bohol, Cebu, Surigao del Norte, and other hard-hit areas in the Visayas and Mindanao.

To date, World Vision has distributed a total of 5,444 life-saving relief items, such as  hygiene kits,  sleeping mats, kitchen and cooking sets, and emergency shelter kits which consist of tarpaulins and ropes among others to a total of 3,928 families.

“Our village wasn’t spared by the impact of Odette. Many of the families here are sleeping without a roof over their heads. Thank you to World Vision for giving us these tarpaulins so we can cover our house especially now that it is raining,” says one teary-eyed survivor during a relief sortie in Sison town, Surigao del Norte.

In areas where access to clean water remains a challenge, water purifier packets and water containers were distributed  to help affected families clean their water especially for washing and drinking.

In the island of Siargo, the site of  Odette’s first landfall, residents are reeling with the growing number of diarrhea cases among adults and children due partly to lack of  clean water access. World Vision, in response to the Siargao government’s need to augment its medical facilities, sent large huggy tents which can be installed for storage and extended  triage  to manage increasing patients.

“As we end the year, we are glad to have served almost 4,000 families who are coping from the impact of the typhoon almost two weeks on,” says World Vision in the Philippines national director Rommel V. Fuerte. “We pray that help will come especially to the least served and hard-to-access areas so that we can reach more in the coming days.”

World Vision aims to assist  a total of 10,000 families or 50,000 individuals in the worst hit areas, as it hopes to reach more  families in other affected provinces including Southern Leyte, Negros Occidental, and the islands of Dinagat and Siargao, as safety and accessibility will allow. World Vision also takes closer attention to the more vulnerable members of the family including the elderly, pregnant and lactating women, members with life threatening sickness and persons with disability and  children under 5 who can be at risk of malnutrition.

In the latest NDRRMC briefing (Dec.31), Typhoon Rai killed 405 people, damaged 532,096 houses, and affected over 1.13 million families, including 500,626 displaced individuals, in 11 regions of the country.



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