Helping Flood Victims in Benin

Edward Bally: You’re watching UNICEF Television.

Floods and heavy rainfalls over the past month have
seriously destructed the life of hundreds of thousands of
people in far West African countries. In those places, 400
people died and more than 1.5 million have been displaced.

In Benin alone, the latest report states that 680,000 people
have been affected and 187 completely lost their homes and
had to be displaced. In many villages, people were caught
in the middle of their sleep when the water started
devastating their homes.

Jude Narcisse Edegan: It was all very sudden. The water level started getting
higher and higher. It started to invade our houses. We
yelled and told the population to evacuate towards the
school and the church. We left everything behind and took
our children to safety.

Edward Bally: Constance Dagnihoun, a mother of five had to leave her
house loosing all her belongings in the water. Like her, all
the villagers had to move 500 meters from their old houses
and build a small settlements of the road. 1,400 people now
live in extremely poor conditions.

Constance Dagnihoun: I now live in this tent with three of the mothers and all our
children. It’s not safe. I'm worried for them. We want to
rebuild new houses as soon as possible.

Edward Bally: To respond to this crisis, UNICEF and its partners in the
United Nations have implemented a comprehensive
response to help those in urgent need. The priority for
UNICEF is to avoid an outbreak of diseases.

Francois Bellet: Our main concern is that people go back to their destroyed
villages and start using the damaged wells which are now
contaminated. There’s a high risk of child mortality and of
an epidemic.

Edward Bally: As a lead urgency on water, health and sanitation issues as
well as on the medication and nutrition, UNICEF helped
the distribution of clean water, disinfectants, soap and
mosquito nets.

UNICEF also provided 1,350,000 purification tablets to
clean the water. The emergency response includes
providing shelter materials as well as food and water to
those in need. Among the hardest people, 200,000 are
children. In the country, 600 classrooms have been
destroyed and many people took shelter in schools
preventing children from getting normal education.
Hopefully all the children of Benin will soon be able to go
back to school but getting back to a normal life might take
a lot more time.

This is Edward Bally reporting for UNICEF television. For
more information, go to UNICEF.org, unite for children.