How Disasters Affect Health: One Family's Story in Laos
By AmmalaThomisith, World Vision Lao PDR Communication Officer
When Soukhouma District experienced the worst flooding in 35 years last month, many families lost so much – their crops, their homes and their ability to earn an income. The flooding also brought a health disaster. As chest-deep water levels inundated villages for more than a week, families were left without clean water, which allowed germs to be spread that caused infections and waterborne diseases.
Lae, 31, was six months pregnant with her second child at the time of the flood and was one of the families affected by ill-health.
Her daughter Phut, 6, followed her mother to get bottled water from World Vision’s distributions site, bringing home much-needed clean water. “We didn’t have water to take a bath, to cook or drink. My family didn’t take a bath for three or four days,” Lae shared. When they wanted to go to the toilet, the family were forced to go to the bathroom in the floodwater – the same water other people were using.
“We were drinking the rain water almost seven days,” Lae said.
When Lae visited the World Vision water distribution site, her husband had been sick for the past two days. “If we let the situation of the flooding happen like this, it can affect our health,” Lae said. "We can get colds and stomach aches because we drank unclean water and are living in an unclean environment that is dirty.”
When Lae’s village started flooding, Lae’s husband helped the family collect their clothes and gather a small amount of rice. They carried their daughter on a boat to a relative’s house in another village. “I was very scared when I entered into the boat because the boat was small, and then our boat got into an accident. It was good our neighbor came to help us and took us all to a safe place. I was very worried how my [unborn] baby might be affected. I don’t know how to swim, if I fell into the water my baby and I might not have lived,” Lae shared.
Lae told me she wanted to see a doctor soon, to make sure everything was okay with her baby. But it was too hard to access to the nearest health centre, as the route there was still full of water and was muddy. Lae hopes to give birth in December 2013.
“Even though this baby is my second child I very excited. My dream is I want to see him or her healthy and safe, I want to hold a child in my arms and breastfeed him or her and see my baby child’s face.”
World Vision partnered with the district government counterpart to deliver thousands of bottles of clean drinking water and food like canned fishes and noodles to the victims of the Soukhouma flood. Basic medicine kits were also provided for flood survivors.