Response prevented tsunami deaths from disease - UN

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The swift response to the Asian tsunami prevented a second wave of deaths from disease and Malnutrition but the task of rebuilding is far from complete, a top U.N. official said exactly one month after the cataclysm.

Jan Egeland, the emergency relief coordinator who played a central role in organizing aid, on Wednesday took stock of the effort since the Dec. 26 undersea earthquake and tidal waves killed more than 200,000 people in a dozen nations around the Indian Ocean.

Despite no roads, few airstrips and bad weather, “we believe we succeeded in avoiding this second wave of death,” Egeland told a news conference. “It is remarkable.”

But Egeland said too many people still lived in tents and sanitation and health care remained precarious, even if epidemics were not evident.

“There is no complacency here for anybody,” Egeland said, “We did save a lot of lives but we have not restored their livelihoods, restored ordinary life” or their mental health.

“That is the big, big task ahead, and that will be even bigger than the emergency life-saving phase,” he said.

Egeland said there were still pockets where access was a problem in Indonesia’s Ache province and in Somalia. But he said a survey in Aceh and Sumatra, the Indonesian areas where killer waves did the most damage, showed no significant rise in Malnutrition.

On Tuesday Indonesians were still pulling bodies from the rubble. The government said some 900,000 people had been buried.

PROSELYTIZING, AID

Egeland was asked about American evangelists who are showering victims with gifts while proselytizing.

“We are very aware of sensitivities in several countries that religious organizations may be too quick in combining relief and missionary services,” he said. “Our position is that we should delink the two, especially in the emergency phase.”

He said some governments “have raised general concerns with involvement of Christian organizations being active in Muslim areas” but have not prohibited their relief work.

Most of the credit for the aid, Egeland said, was due to local communities and national governments in addition to humanitarian groups including U.N. agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which alone raised $1.2 billion in one month.

The U.N. emergency relief appeal raised $390 million from governments and private donors and another $250 million “in the mail” to date.

Governments, aid groups and private donors have pledged a total of $7 billion so far in tsunami aid or future reconstruction, but much of it has not yet materialized.

Food was distributed to 1.2 million people while more than 500,000 people were being provided with clean water, Egeland said.

He said military help was decisive from 24 countries including the United States and Australia as well as soldiers from the affected nations.

But he expected the military’s role to subside as roads reopened and civilian aid groups took over. 

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