UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : Update on Afghanistan’s earthquake response

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More than 66,000 directly affected by Afghanistan’s quake victims

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has launched a multi-sectoral Herat Earthquake Response Plan in response to a series of powerful earthquakes that rocked Herat Province since 7 October.

In an update, OCHA reported that at least 1,480 people have been killed and 1,950 wounded.

Satellite imagery indicates that 289 villages have been severely impacted with many destroyed. The most recent earthquake on 15 October affected an estimated 30 new villages, forcing families to live in makeshift shelters or informal settlements. Speaking from Kabul, Katherine Carey, deputy head of the OCHA office in Kabul said that around 66,300 people had also been directly impacted across six primary districts.

Many of those who left their homes following the initial earthquake are now residing outside in either makeshift or temporary shelters out of fear of additional aftershocks, Ms. Carey added.

According to the OCHA spokesperson, the earthquake's impact is far-reaching with

reports of more than 3,700 homes completely destroyed and around 5,000 homes severely damaged. Upwards of 2,600 homes have sustained some kind of damage, along with schools and healthcare facilities.

As winter approaches, concern is also growing as people will be exposed to harsh weather and health risks.

With food resources limited and damaged water and sanitation points, fears are rising about disease outbreaks: “The priority really is to ensure that these families and communities have some protection from the elements.

“In terms of shelter requirements, obviously the immediate priority is to ensure that people not residing out in the open completely and they have some kind of protection,” Ms. Carey explained. “So, in the first instance we are providing families with emergency tents. But the reality is, is that will only be able to withstand them for so long as well. We will have to move them in some kind of transitional shelter, normally a sort of repurposed, prefabricated kind of module that is a bit more like a sort of temporary structure,” Ms. Carey added.

To help, the UN’s Herat Earthquake Response Plan requires some $93 million for 114,000 people. The OCHA spokesperson called on the community not to forget Afghanistan amid other high global needs: “We're able to provide the populations with the assistance they need insofar as we have the resources and the supplies to do so. We're already using existing stock that we have in country of tents, for example, and medical supplies and medicines and also of wash kits and hygiene kits and kits. And those will need to be replenished also as well,” she said.

ends

Update on Afghanistan’s earthquake response - OCHA 17 October 2023

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