Southern Africa Floods Kill Three in Zambia
Date: 16-Jan-08
Country: ZAMBIA
Author: Shapi Shacinda
Zambia has been one of the worst-hit countries by floods that have displaced thousands of people, destroyed infrastructure and increased the risk of disease.
"We have picked three bodies of victims of floods in the Maramba stream. These people were swept away by floods in the stream ... as they tried to cross using a footbridge," Lemmy Kajoba, the police chief for Zambia's southern province, told Reuters by telephone.
Heavy downpours are common in southern Africa during the annual rainy season, which runs generally from November to April, but the relentless rain has caught officials off guard.
Some 72,000 people in Mozambique have been affected by floods, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said. More than 30,000 of them have been evacuated to higher ground due to the rising Zambezi River, OCHA spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs told a news conference in Geneva.
"The situation in Mozambique is worsening due to incessant rains which are also affecting surrounding countries," she said.
Some 37,000 hectares of arable land have been flooded and an unknown number of cattle have drowned in Mozambique, she said. Floods have killed at least six people in Mozambique, relief officials say.
The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) appealed for US$2.5 million to help women and children in Malawi for the next five months.
UNICEF said that more than one million people were at risk of food shortages in Malawi, where cholera and malaria remain major threats.
"The crop fields are flooded, the whole next harvest in April is at risk," UNICEF spokeswoman Veronique Taveau said.
Eight people have died from a cholera outbreak in southern Malawi, where flooding has increased the risk of contracting the disease, the health minister said.
"Floods are worsening the situation because in rural areas people are unable to satisfy the most basic human needs like hygiene, proper sanitation and safe drinking water," Health Minister Marjorie Ngaunje told Reuters in an interview.
Zambia's power utility Zesco will open flood gates of a major power generation dam in January or February to prevent it from collapse due to heavy flooding, its director said.
"What we are now doing is to warn the people living along the Kafue River so that they are not caught unaware," Rhodnie Sisala said.
Experts say opening the Itezhi-Tezhi dam would raise water levels in the Kafue River which feeds the Zambezi, one of the longest in Africa, and cause flooding in eastern Zambia and parts of Mozambique.
(Additional reporting by Mabvuto Banda in Lilongwe and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Phumza Macanda and Sami Aboudi)
