Cyclone Aila

Oxfam in action

With the help of local partners, Oxfam is providing assistance to nearly 110,000 people in Khulna and Shatkhira districts in south-west Bangladesh.

In the immediate aftermath of the cyclone, we provided emergency shelter materials and soaps, oral rehydration salts, sanitary cloths and household items to the worst affected families.

We are currently helping ensure communites have access to clean water and sanitation facilities to prevent the spread of disease. Besides setting up water purification plants to provide drinking water, we are also installing and repairing tube wells, cleaning and re-excavating ponds and building latrines and washing areas for women.

Through 250 local Community Health Volunteers, Oxfam has started raising awareness about basic hygiene and sanitation. Our work focuses on the safe collection, storage, and usage of drinking water, the use and maintenance of hygienic latrines, and maintaining personal hygiene.

Through our special cash-for-work programme, we are providing people with a much needed income by employing them to repair the damaged embankments, roads and other community assets. We are also providing fishing tools, boats and nets to selected families who lost their means of making a living when the cyclone hit.

We continue to lobby the local and national government to take immediate steps to reconstruct damaged embankments to protect communities and their land from saline water. Oxfam is lobbying the Bangladesh government and international community  for longer-term initiatives to rebuild the affected areas and help communities be better prepared for future disasters.

Donate now to the Cyclone Aila emergency response

On the ground

Around 1 milion women, men, and children lost their homes to Cyclone Aila which caused substantial damage across areas of southern Bangladesh and West Bengal.

In pictures: The impact of Cyclone Aila

Three months on, tens of thousands of families are facing the monsoon season without proper shelter. Many are living in makeshift shelters without proper water or sanitation facilities. They are unable to return home while the embankments damaged by the cyclone remain unrepaired.

Many drinking water sources have been contaminated with saline seawater, while the massive flooding caused by the cyclone also killed the fish that people rear in the freshwater ponds. This will affect people's means of making a living in the future.

"The ponds are a lifeline – they give people drinking water, water to irrigate, and fish," explains Oxfam's Zubin Zama n.

Many latrines were washed away when the cyclone hit and the threat of water-borne diseases such as cholera is very high, especially among children and the elderly.

  The cyclone-affected areas of Bangladesh are now an ideal breeding ground for all kinds of diseases. In many areas all the sources of fresh water have been polluted by the seawater, forcing people to drink dirty water. This has already made thousands of people sick. Without urgent action many more will fall ill.

Heather Blackwell, Oxfam Country Programme Manager in Bangladesh

Blog: Impending health crisis in Cyclone Aila-affected areas
(4 June)

Massive tidal waves washed away many families' belongings and destroyed their crops and farmland. Even if they are able to return home, without any way to make a living, thousands of families will face an uncertain future until the next crop season in the new year.

Update: September 2009