A seaside slum in Tacloban, the Philippines, devastated by Typhoon Haiyan
By Denis McClean
GENEVA - Some of the world’s most disaster-prone nations are gearing up for their greatest challenge in the coming months when cyclones and floods can be expected to force the evacuation of millions of people while COVID-19 remains a widespread menace.
India, Bangladesh and the Philippines have significantly reduced loss of life from hydro-meteorological events in recent years thanks to the effectiveness of their early warning systems combined with timely evacuations in the face of extreme weather events.
National disaster management agencies, Red Cross and Red Crescent national societies and NGOs already engaged in the COVID-19 response are now blending those efforts with preparations for monsoon and cyclone seasons which usually displace millions of people across Asia and the Pacific.
“COVID-19 has underlined that our response mechanisms, particularly for black swan events - in both developing and developed countries – require a lot of strengthening,” said Kamal Kishore, a senior official with India’s National Disaster Management Agency with responsibility for the COVID-19 response.
Mr. Kishore was one of the disaster management leaders who spelt out the changing approaches to disaster preparedness in a wide-ranging webinar today on “Combatting the Dual Challenges of Climate-related Disasters and COVID-19”, the latest in a series on learning from the pandemic organized by UNDRR’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. It attracted 1,169 participants from 91 countries.
UNDRR regional chief, Loretta Hieber Girardet, opened the discussion with the observation that a taste of what is to come has already been experienced this month by small island developing states in the Pacific where recovery efforts continue following category five Cyclone Harold which struck the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Tonga and Vanuatu leaving 28 dead and many thousands homeless and living in shelters.
Sanaka Samarasinha, UN Resident Coordinator, UN Multi-Country Office, Fiji, highlighted the situation in Vanuatu where 160,000 people were affected by Cyclone Harold and many had lost their homes. The country which was already in a state of emergency because of COVID-19 had suffered severe damage to critical infrastructure including health facilities, schools and agriculture.
Mr. Samarasinha said an earlier initiative to combat a measles outbreak has been adapted for the COVID-19 response and the UN was also stepping up its efforts to combat violence against women and girls in the COVID-19 lockdown, but social or physical distancing is a major challenge in the evacuation shelters. There have been no confirmed cases of COVID-19 but there is also no testing available.
Mr. Kishore spelled out eight key considerations for addressing the challenges ahead in India where there are more than 12,000 cases of COVID-19 and nearly 400 deaths. “It’s reasonably well controlled compared to other countries. We are under lockdown for the last three weeks and we have another two and a half weeks to go.”
He highlighted that out of over 700 districts, almost 400 are affected. This created huge challenges because unlike other disasters it was not geographically confined to a small pocket.
Mr. Kishore said it was a key priority to work doubly hard to minimize the burden on hospitals arising from other hazards, such as heatwaves, by treating people at the community level in primary health care centres wherever possible. Hospital preparedness required strengthening to ensure their capacity to function in response to extreme weather events.