DRC, East Africa: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Briefing Notes

DRC

• Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock has announced an immediate US$2 million allocation from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to help humanitarian partners in the DRC fight and contain a new outbreak of Ebola virus disease.
• “We know that coordinated early response will be critical containing this outbreak. This CERF allocation will help our humanitarian partners to deliver vital services to people in affected communities and to stop the spread of the virus,” said ERC Lowcock.
• The ERC approved the CERF Rapid Response allocation within 48 hours of the Government of the DRC declaring the new EVD outbreak in Bikoro in Equateur Province on 8 May.
• The allocation will help UN agencies and partners kick-start the immediate response in support of the Government. Urgent activities include critical health action such as surveillance, treatment, community mobilization and sensitization, safe and dignified burials, and supporting logistics services.

East Africa floods

• Heavy rains in Somalia’s Juba and Shabelle river basins continue to cause flash and riverine flooding. An estimated 220,000 people have been displaced out of a total of 718,000 affected.
• Humanitarian partners and Somali authorities are providing life-saving assistance, logistical support to move people to higher grounds, and distributing sandbags to repair river breakages.
• In Ethiopia, flash floods are expected to continue in flood-prone areas. In April alone, nearly 171,000 people were displaced across the country, the majority by flooding in Somali region. Floods have also destroyed some 13,000 hectares of farmland and damaged health facilities and schools.
• The Government and partners are dispatching emergency relief including safe drinking water and hygiene and sanitation relief which is crucial to avoid a reemergence of Acute Watery Diarrhoea.
• In Kenya, more than 311,000 people have been displaced by floods and the death toll has risen to 132, including some 30 people who were killed in Nakuru, when a dam bursts its banks on 9 May.
• The Government and partners, in particular the Kenyan Red Cross, are responding including with search and rescue of people marooned by floods.