Grave concerns remain in flood-affected parts of Fiji
The head of the New Zealand branch of UNICEF says there are grave concerns about the health and education of people in flood-affected areas of Fiji.
Transcript
The head of the New Zealand branch of UNICEF says there are grave concerns about the health and education of people in flood-affected areas of Fiji.
Vivienne Maidaborn has just returned from disaster-affected areas in Fiji, and says some areas damaged by Cyclone Winston in February have bounced back remarkably.
But she says in areas affected by subsequent heavy rains and flooding, crop damage has created a severe food shortage and hygiene issues.
Ms Maidaborn told Jamie Tahana the response to Cyclone Winston has been effective, but there is still a lot to do.
VIVIENE MAIDABORN: Generally the people who are in the way of the floods are now in a very serious situation. In some ways more serious than the people who were hit hard by the cyclone. Those people particularly where they have got great village leadership have just got on with rebuilding and replanting food and kind of can see a pathway to being back to where they were before. But the people who are growing food on the flood plains or whose houses are in flood prone areas are exhausted, they are tired their children are sick with at least conjunctivitis probably diarrhoea and increasingly bronchial illnesses. And I think the education system is another example of a system that needs a huge amount of work. 80 percent of Fijian children are back at school 20 percent are kind of missing in action. Perhaps they are still helping their parents clean up or perhaps their family has moved and they are yet to turn up in a new school. But I think that is pretty normal for this time in a natural disaster recovery.
JAMIE TAHANA: Those 20 percent of children, from past disasters how many of them go back and how disadvantaged are these children in terms of education.
VM: Yeah good question, I mean from a UNICEF point of view, reconnecting children with education as soon as possible is critical because the longer you leave it the habit disappears. So we will be working hard finding those children, either finding them enrolled somewhere else or encouraging their families to get them back to school.
JT: The defence force's Australia, France, New Zealand left last week and what needs to happen now?
VM: Well so much still needs to happen. From a UNICEF point of view sanitation is the next big priority that everybody that we talk to and the public health organisations tell us has access to water. Even if they are still boiling it. The next priority is to ensure clean water sources and sanitation. So people's toilets have kind of blown away or flooded. So open defecation is suddenly the main toileting method and we have got to change that fast.
JT: How has this response gone because a year ago in Vanuatu we had cyclone Pam and there was some criticism of you know, lack of coordination between aid agencies and governments and you now multiple things being done at the same time. Has this happened in Fiji?
VM: Look a completely different kettle of fish. This is a super well organised government with quite a strong centralist approach. So here the government deployed the army immediately. The army where the main distribution network, so NGO's that flooded Vanuatu, small NGO's with now background there just arrived with some money or some goods that just didn't happen in Fiji.
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