LookAtVietnam – Hundreds of thousands of people in central provinces face the risk of infectious diseases and schools are still closed one week after typhoon Ketsana
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People in central provinces are cleaning schools and hospitals and repairing houses after Storm Ketsana passed through. |
Quang Nam Province Preventive Medicine Centre’s statistics show there are 335 people with diarrhoea, 1,300 with pink eyes, 4,200 with flu and 23,000 with skin diseases.
Ten students at a Nam Giang district boarding school are in isolation with suspected swine flu.
In Da Nang City, public and private health clinics in Hoa Vang, Cam Le, Lien Chieu and Ngu Hanh Son districts are overloaded with hundreds of cases of diseases.
Doctor Le Thi Thanh Xuan, from Da Nang City’s General Hospital, said the number hospitalised for infectious diseases had reached 300 a day, 10 times higher than usual.
The diseases threaten tens of thousands of households in Hue City where 98 per cent of wells have been contaminated due to flooding.
Provincial authorities have sent doctors and health workers to storm-hit localities and supplied medicine for health centres plus Chloramin B to sterilise the wells.
More than 10,000 pupils have been hit by the closure of 15 schools in Quang Ngai province, according to the provincial Department of Education and Training.
“Most of chairs and tables of these schools were swept away and books and notebooks damaged,” said department director Thai Van Dong. “Many poor pupils are unable to afford new learning aids to come back to school.”
Binh Minh Secondary School previously had 90 sets of tables and chairs but only seven sets are left after the flood.
The typhoon and flood destroyed 250 classrooms in the province and damaged the roofs on another 3,000, and submerged thousands of computers with the loss estimated at VND110 billion (US$6.16 million), Dong said.
Meanwhile, in Quang Tri province the typhoon destroyed 58 schools and tore the roofs off another 100.
Nguyen Van Bang, chief of the Secretariat of the provincial Department of Education and Training, said the difficulty at present was to clear up to 40cm of mud from classroom floors to reopen the schools.
The Ministry of Education and Training has worked out measures to help pupils get back to school as soon as possible, to support pupils in flood-hit areas and to work with education and training departments in the resoration process.
The ministry is also working with the Viet Nam Education Publishing House and foreign organisations to replace school books.
Meanwhile those who live in affected areas are now confronted with rising prices for necessities.
Prices of vegetables sold at markets have risen to VND10,000 (US$0.5) a bunch because crops in the areas have been destroyed.
In low lying areas which are still flooded, the demand for clean water has pushed the cost up to VND18,000 ($1) per 21L bottle.
The price of building materials, such as iron and cement, has increased and medicine is up 20 per cent.
Aid money rolls in |
The US Government yesterday, October 7, announced an additional US$500,000 in emergency assistance for Vietnamese people in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Ketsana, bringing the total assistance provided by the US to $600,000. |
Local authorities have asked market inspectors to stablise the prices of necessities in markets.
In other central province, Quang Nam, villages have turned into desert as floods left behind sand.
One week after Tropical Storm Ketsana cut a swathe through the region, 70 houses in a village in Quang Nam province are almost completely buried in sand left behind by the floods.
“That night [September 29], villagers ran helter-skelter on hearing the flood’s roar,” said Van Ba Ly, head of Dai My village.
“They left their houses, carried their children, and took refuge up the mountain. They returned the following day and found the village had turned into a dazzling white sand plain.”
Around 90 per cent of the houses were buried under two metres of sand.
Not only houses, but also schools are buried under the sand, and the village’s hundreds of students cannot go to school yet. “Where are the books for them to go to school?” asked Ly.
Meanwhile, an emergency relief group of soldiers of Ea Sup district, in Central Highland Dak Lak province, yesterday, October 7, rescued 13 farmers in fields cut off by a flash flood in unusual prolonged rain.
The rain caused floods in communes in Ea Sup district, two of which – Ia T’mot and Ea Bung – were still isolated.
Local authorities have forces on standby to help people in emergencies.
VietNamNet/Viet Nam News