WHOLE ISLANDS DEVASTATED

After storming through the Caribbean and leaving a trail of devastation in its wake, Hurricane Irma has finally relented.

Since last Tuesday, Hurricane Irma has wreaked havoc in the Caribbean, flattening homes on St Martin, Barbuda, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba. Florida was the last to see the wrath of this ferocious storm.

A highly-trained ShelterBox Response Team has been deployed to understand how we can help the families who have lost everything.

International disaster relief agency ShelterBox is on standby to respond to damage and displacement caused by Hurricane Irma, the most powerful Atlantic tropical storm in a decade. ShelterBox has experts available for interview now and over the coming days.

Cornwall-based ShelterBox, the disaster relief agency specialising in emergency shelter after natural disasters, is in touch with its Florida-based office, its US response teams, and its contacts and partners across the Caribbean, as Hurricane Irma threatens several countries.

Three years of drought in Somaliland has now left it in the grip of a cholera epidemic caused by dwindling and polluted water supplies. UK based disaster relief agency ShelterBox has been distributing water filters and carriers, as well as shelter materials to its nomadic population Like much of the horn of Africa, Somaliland is enduring failing crops, a parched landscape, and now the scourge of cholera as water sources are contaminated by waste and rotting animal carcasses.

LAKE CHAD BASIN

Violent conflict, caused by the militant extremist group Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria, has been raging since 2009. The violence has since spread to the neighbouring border regions of Cameroon, Niger and Chad, directly affecting around 17 million people.

In addition, this area has been besieged by other problems such as food insecurity and flooding. These floods have not only wiped out edible crops, but the reeds traditionally used to make roofs.

As nine months of bloody battle end in the routing of IS resistance, aid agencies including ShelterBox are standing by ready to support families who were trapped in a destroyed city

The long wait is over. Military reports indicate that the final enclaves of IS resistance in Mosul are now in retreat, signalling the end of the largest and longest urban battle anywhere on the earth since World War 2.