Executive summary
Introduction
This report marks the one-year anniversary of the typhoon that struck the central region of the Philippines on the morning of 8 November 2013. Typhoon Haiyan, locally known as Yolanda, was one of the strongest typhoons ever recorded, with wind speeds reaching up to 195 miles per hour. The damage caused by Typhoon Haiyan was extensive, affecting many of the islands of the central Philippines. Over 1 million homes were damaged or completely destroyed, more than 6,000 people lost their lives and over 4 million people were displaced.
A significant proportion of those affected by the typhoon were older people. Around 1.27 million, or 8% of the reported 16 million affected people were aged 60 years or over.
Many older people lost relatives, shelter and livelihoods, leaving them displaced and traumatised. Many had to deal with existing vulnerabilities such as noncommunicable diseases associated with poverty and poor nutrition. Poor access to information compromised their ability to receive help. For example, 75% of older people interviewed by HelpAge and UNHCR did not know that medical services were available free of charge.
About 65% of older people were working pre-Haiyan, but many were not included in post-Haiyan cash-forwork programmes.
HelpAge International (HelpAge) worked closely with the Coalition of the Services of the Elderly (COSE) to assess the level of damage and identify the immediate emergency support needs of the typhoon-impacted communities. Within days of the disaster, HelpAge International and COSE formed a joint response as HelpAge-COSE and began to provide essential relief support to people in the affected islands of Negros Occidental, North Cebu and West and East Leyte. There were two distinct phases in this emergency response.
The initial relief phase covered a period of six months from November 2013 to April 2014 and supported older people households in particular but also included other households in the affected communities. The second, or recovery phase, from May 2014 onwards, addressed the particular longer term needs of older people for shelter, health and livelihood support, targeting the most vulnerable and poorer older person households.
A key strategy throughout has been to help older people help each other. Older people not only have particular needs during emergencies but can also contribute to meeting these needs. For example, HelpAge and COSE worked through Older People Organisations (OPOs) to enable older people to obtain ID cards so that they could claim entitlements such as discounts on medicines.
They recruited and trained older volunteers to provide peer counselling to traumatised older people in hospital and relocation shelters.
Supporting existing and new OPOs continues to be a priority to make sure that responses to older people’s need for a regular income, shelter, healthcare and access to rights and entitlements are appropriate and sustainable.
The relief phase focused on meeting the essential food and non-food needs of older people and the wider affected community. Counselling support was provided by trained older people volunteers to other older people, as many had suffered traumatic affects from the impacts of the typhoon. Access to appropriate medical care was limited, even before the disaster, in response to this, basic health check-up services were provided through the Rural Health Centres. Shelter support was provided to allow basic repairs as many homes were either damaged or destroyed. The relief support provided in the first six months reached a wider group of affected households, not only older people.
From May 2014 onwards, the second, or recovery phase saw a reduction in the number of communities that could be supported, as the recovery support would focus on sustaining impacts over a longer period, till the end of 2015. In this phase, recovery support would be aimed at older people, in particular, the most vulnerable poorer older person households would be targeted. The initial recovery support had focused on rebuilding typhoon damaged older people houses, training local carpenters on improved construction techniques, restoring lost livelihoods as a result of the typhoon and providing social welfare grants to the most vulnerable older person households. The longer term recovery support includes supporting protection and inclusion activities, healthcare support, livelihoods training and grants and increasing community resilience through Disaster Risk Reduction support. A key strategy is the direct involvement of community based Older People Organisations (OPOs). The OPOs are receiving training and support to promote the sustainability of these important services at the community level and beyond the current emergency.