South Asia Floods
1,200 people have died and 43 million people have been hit by the monsoon rains and heavy flooding in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. Photo: Communities affected by the floods in Assam, India. Image Credit: Oxfam India
An estimated 43 million people have been affected by flooding and landslides across a huge area of India, Bangladesh and Nepal. Please support Oxfam's response and help us provide clean water, sanitation and other urgently needed items.
The Situation
1,200 people have died and 43 million people have been hit by the monsoon rains and heavy flooding in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. While some flooding is normal with monsoonal rainfall, for most of the affected communities this level of flooding is unusual and unheard of. Oxfam staff in Bangladesh reported that two thirds of the country was under water, and in some areas the flooding is the worst since 1988.
The flooding has cut off thousands of villages, depriving people of food and clean water for days. In Nepal, one region received one month’s worth of rain in just two days.Families have lost their homes and crops, and the number of casualties is likely to continue to increase.
How Oxfam is helping
Oxfam is working with flood-hit communities and local partners, providing more than 186,000 flood-hit people with clean drinking water, food supplies, emergency shelter, hygiene kits, and other essentials.
Paolo Lubrano, Oxfam’s Regional Humanitarian Manager for Asia, said: “We have been building the capacity of people to cope with and recover from disaster, and to prevent these crises in future. This will only be possible if international agencies work with local people and put them at the center of the response.”
Climate Change:
This heavy monsoon and unpredictable weather are most likely due to climate change which hits the poorest people the hardest. The carbon footprint of the world’s one billion poorest people represents just 3% of the global total.
Oxfam works with poor and vulnerable people to build their resilience to climate change and to make their communities safer.
How you can help
Make a donation today to Oxfam Canada's Emergency Response Fund. Oxfam Canada's Emergency Response Fund (ERF) enables us to provide timely, appropriate responses to emergency situations and support reconstruction work. The ERF ensures that Oxfam can quickly respond wherever and whenever the need is greatest.
Learn More:
Media Release: Oxfam responds as 43 million hit by South Asia Floods, August 2017
Page last updated January 2, 2018