EMpower Grantees weather Cyclone Aila

On May 25, Cyclone Aila landed near the border of India and Bangladesh, devastating the low-lying coastal region of the Sundarbans in West Bengal state. 142 were killed in West Bengal, and over 8.7 million people were affected. Thousands of villages were cut off and 600,000 houses were damaged. Transportation, communications and electricity links were severed to the thousands of inhabited islands in this delta region. The current threat is disease as supplies of clean water have been cut off; 5,000 cases of intestinal disease due to contaminated water have been recorded. The cyclone has been followed by tidal waves which pose a continuing threat to coastal communities. The district of 24 South Parganas, where two of EMpower’s grantees, Nishtha and Parivaar, work, has been particularly hard hit, with 100,000 made homeless and at least 49 deaths. Both Nishtha and Parivaar have been focusing their efforts on immediate relief operations.