UN says over 5mln people in West, Central Africa impacted by floods

More than 5 million people in 16 countries in West and Central Africa have been impacted by floods so far this year, UN humanitarians said on Thursday.

In West and Central Africa, floods have reached catastrophic levels, with Chad, Niger and Nigeria among the hardest hit accounting for more than 80 per cent of people affected, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

More than 1,000 people have been killed, and at least 740,000 people have been displaced, the office said. In addition, hundreds of thousands of homes, more than 100 schools, and dozens of health facilities have been damaged. Nearly 500,000 acres of farmland has been affected.

OCHA said that without sufficient support, the floods threaten to hinder the reopening of schools, with the new school year set to begin this month. The floods could also aggravate existing food insecurity, particularly in Chad and Niger.

"The precarious living conditions of people affected by the floods also increase the risk of waterborne diseases, such as cholera, which is spreading in many regions of Niger and Nigeria," OCHA said.

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Acting Emergency Relief Coordinator Joyce Msuya has allocated 35 million U.S. dollars from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund for flood relief in Chad, Niger, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Congo. "But more money is needed," OCHA said.

Meanwhile, Msuya has allocated 5 million dollars from the Central Emergency Response Fund to scale up the response to floods in the states of Borno and Bauchi in the northeast and Sokoto in the northwest, Nigeria.

The new funds will help humanitarian partners reach 280,000 people in the three states with food, clean water, sanitation and shelter support, and will also help to rapidly mobilize resources to improve access to healthcare, including preventing the spread of cholera and other waterborne diseases, OCHA said.

The humanitarian coordinator in Nigeria, Mohamed Malick Fall, said that the floods have created a crisis within a crisis, with millions of people already facing critical levels of food insecurity before the floods.