The Yelewa primary school makeshift camp located in Yola-South Local Government Area in Adamawa State for the victims of the Sunday flooding, has children and old women dominating the number of the victims.
When our correspondent visited the camp at about 10am on Monday, children, old women and pregnant women were laying on mats in different class rooms their new abode.
A man who identified himself as Alhaji Bello Pegi, told PUNCH Online that two of his brothers are still missing after the devastating flood.
My house is gone, my animals have been swept away, my farm disappeared with the flood, I’m now empty with no food, no house and without my brothers,” he said.
Narrating her ordeal a young woman who was eating with her four months baby girl on a corridor of a class room said that she is yet to believe what she saw last Sunday morning.
“On that night when the rain started I went out and put three rubber containers to get water unknown to me that it is going to be pains after the rain,” she said.
Speaking, the executive secretary Adamawa State Emergency Management Agency, Dr. Celine Laori, said that relief materials both consumables and non-cnsumables have been taking to the two Internally Displaced Persons’ camps in Yelewa primary school and Namtari.
The deputy governor professor Keletapwa Faruta has directed that the IDPs in Namtari camp should be moved to Yelewa primary school, since there is enough class rooms to comfortably accommodate the IDPs,” she said.
Celine had early told our correspondent this month that Governor Ahmadu Fintiri has released N700 million to her agency which was used to purchased food stuffs and other materials in preparedness ahead of the flooding season.
She pointed out that both local and international non-governmental organisations are in the two camps, providing both health and other services to the victims.
On the dead toll, she said , “What some people are saying is speculations be patient I will give you the correct figure after the rescue operation.”
An official of ADSEMA told punch that there are 2,394 IDPs in Yelewa camp and 929 in Namtari camp bringing the total to 3,223 in the two camps.
The executive chairman of Adamawa State Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr.Suleiman Bashir, said on Monday that his agency swiftly deployed health workers to temporary camps to deliver emergency services such as immunisation, antenatal care, and treatment of other ccommon illnesses.
He urged journalists to help disseminate messages on hygiene, sanitation, and disease prevention, not just during emergencies but as part of ongoing public health education.
Nutrition must be our highest priority in Adamawa State,” he said
He noted that the agency is partnering with the Child Nutrition Fund to procure Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) ,but admitted that the coverage remains insufficient.
