Attachments
Highlights
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According to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief (MoDMR) floodwaters have begun to recede from 30 out of the 32 flood-affected districts.
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MoDMR is conducting damage assessments (D Form) in all the affected districts and results are expected by 21 September.
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An estimated total of 103,855 houses are reported to have been destroyed and 633,792 have been partially damaged; 145 persons are known to have lost their lives due to the floods.
Situation Overview
As of 17 September, community reports indicate that the flood situation in many northern areas has improved and people who were staying in shelters have returned to their homes. However, key problems that communities are currently facing include: limited access to cooking (lack of utensils and fuel); high transportation costs, due to damage to roads and bridges in many areas; lack of work, particularly for day labourers; lack of medical support; rapidly increasing levels of debt; lack of support for people with disabilities; setbacks in children’s education where schools were being used as shelters; difficulty in replacing belongings and assets that were left behind while sheltering.
Damaged roads and bridges/culverts have been mostly repaired and road communication is re-established. According to an assessment conducted by the Shelter Cluster on 6-9 September 2017, vulnerable, marginalized and poorer communities were the worst affected by the floods, especially communities building with mud-houses or living on chars and embankments. While many are recovering, there remain specific groups, especially in chars, where there is an urgent need for emergency shelter support that contributes meaningfully to longer-term housing solutions.
The Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) has activated a hot line (16263) for people to receive information on how to manage post-flood health problems. To date, there have been more than 13,000 cases of illness linked to the flood reported, including diarrhoea, respiratory infection, skin infection and eye infections. A web-based dashboard for disseminating information on the health situation as well as interventions in the flood-affected areas was developed (http://www.dghs.gov.bd/index.php/en/home/4601-health-situation-interventions-in-flood-affectedareas).
HCTT partners are scaling up the emergency response in the flood-affected northern and central parts of Bangladesh. On 1 September 2017, the HCTT launched an Emergency Response Plan to complement the timely and effective response by the Government of Bangladesh.