If children are the future leaders, then there is no hope for the future at Motormeh Regent, where kids are dying because of malnutrition and lack of adequate and timely medical attention.
The village’s Head Woman, Elenorah Jokomie Metzger, said, “In the past few days, parents have lost their kids and for the past months kids have been dying in the area… I believe this is due to lack of feeding and food,” she said.
Metzger further explained that most of the time parents said the child will only have temperature and the next minute the child is dead… “This is why I said it could be malnutrition or maybe lack of money for medication and access to medical attention at time. The places some of these people are living if a pregnant woman stomach aches at night it is so difficult to access the nearest health clinic at Regent, neither Lumley nor Hill Station.”
Another challenge is access to clean drinking water. The SLRC with funds from staff members of United Nations Federal Credit Union (UNFTU), 40 members of affected communities were trained on how to use aqua tabs, and on household water treatment and safe storage. Another 20 people were trained on water quality testing. As part of the intervention 1,000 households were supplied with aqua tabs and ORS.
Mudslide survivor, Fatmata Koroma, is one of the beneficiaries of the training. She explained, wells are running dry. However, now they know how to harvest, treat and store water safely. Koroma said as the rainy season is round the corner they have been going around the community training members on how to treat and store water to avoid waterborne diseases.
SLRC Disaster Management Coordinator, Thomas Abu, said, “This is a fulfilment of the plan to support 1,000 survivors’ households. Part of the package were relief support, livelihood support and health and hygiene promotion support. The aqua tabs are part of the hygiene promotion support.”
OG/18/4/18
By Ophaniel Gooding
Thursday April 19, 2018.
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