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Response Bulletin - Manipur Floods and Landslide, 2015, Volume 1, October Issue, 2015

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KEY NOTE MESSAGE

Emmanuel Hospital Association

It is our great pleasure to write the key note message of first bulletin for Manipur Flood Response 2015 initiated by Sphere India.

The recent rains and floods led to 4 deaths and missing 5 persons and also caused extensive damage to homes and property, with the worst affected districts being Chandel and Thoubal. The other affected districts are Bishnupur, Churachandpur and Ukhrul.

The humanitarian support contributed by the NGOs was commendable with the support from the government and various relief committees set up in the affected districts. Being the first of its kind experiencing such worst flood in the state, it was a big challenge for the government and local bodies in responding to the disaster. Despite of lack of preparedness and capacity to response to such disaster the timely act of NGOs and government through collaboration and coordination the situation steadily improves with response underway.

Initiation of Inter Agency Groups (IAGs) with the technical support from Sphere India is a milestone step to strengthen the partnership between the NGOs and GO. The collaborative efforts during the relief work demonstrated the importance of coordination in disaster management. One good example was the introduction and regular update of unified response system (URS) matrix where its helps in allocating resources and avoiding overlapping resulted to maximum reach out to affected villages.

We look forward the strengthening its mechanism of IAG-Manipur in monitoring the emergency response and actions taken up by NGO and government to ensure transparency and accountability and setting up of “State Disaster Management Authority in Manipur” to ensure sustain effective response system in addressing any disaster in future.

The decentralization of IAG at the district level with inclusion of local organisations is crucial to strengthen the response capacity and sustainability. The IAG with this new bulletin will expand the space for sharing good practices by the different agencies taken up at the ground and raise the voice of affected people.

Emmanuel Hospital Association (EHA) contributed humanitarian support with medical health camps and distribution of relief materials in the worst affected Chandel District. EHA also initiated capacity building of local bodies on disaster management in partnership with district administration.