(Blantyre) Cyclone Freddy, which has killed more than 400 people in southern Africa, has affected more than half a million people in Malawi, one of the poorest countries now facing the risk of a humanitarian crisis, warned on Friday. United Nations.
Freddy “reduced to an area of low pressure and fully dissipated on March 15,” the local UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a status update.
In six days, the equivalent of six months of rain fell on southern Malawi, the epicenter of the bad weather, causing floods and deadly landslides.
“More than 500,000 people have been affected since March 12,” according to OCHA. More than 183,000 people out of a population of nearly 20 million are homeless.
Some 300 emergency shelters have been opened but the destruction is still limiting access for humanitarian teams and making aid difficult, the World Food Program (WFP) said in a statement.
“It’s all gone, the potatoes, the corn,” Loveness Makhala, a mother of four, told AFP. The harvest was to take place in a month. Picking up bits of sheet metal and bricks, the remains of her house, she confesses that she does not know “how we are going to spend the year without a house and without food”.
Formed in early February off Australia, the cyclone, which made an unprecedented crossing of more than 8,000 km from east to west in the Indian Ocean, is on track to be ranked the longest on record.
It followed a looping path rarely recorded by meteorologists, hitting Madagascar and Mozambique for the first time at the end of February, then again in March these two countries and Malawi.
It hit the latter country the hardest, where more than 280,000 children are in urgent need of humanitarian aid, UNICEF spokeswoman Fungma Fudong told AFP.
“There is a risk that the current cholera epidemic will worsen, with children being the most vulnerable to this crisis,” she added.
A state of disaster has been declared in the country, the police and the army deployed. President Lazarus Chakwera appealed for international help.
“The country will need significant support,” said WFP Malawi Director Paul Turnbull, promising to mobilize as quickly as possible.
South Africa lends a hand to the rescue teams, the United Kingdom must also send reinforcements. Neighboring Zambia sent food and tents, according to a statement from the Minister of Defence.