Mercy missions report Guiuan situation bleak

The first mercy missions that got through the hard-hit Guiuan town and other areas battered by Supertyphoon “Yolanda” said the situation there was bleak.

The Paris-based Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF or Doctors without Borders), said its teams used car, boat, plane and helicopter to reach battered areas in northern Cebu province, Eastern Samar, Panay Island, and Western Leyte.

“Access is extremely difficult and this is preventing people from receiving help. Our priority is to get to those people in more isolated areas; they are the hardest to reach and often the last to receive much-needed assistance,” MSF emergency coordinator in the Philippines, Dr. Natasha Reyes, said in a statement.

The toll was “clearly massive” and much of the region’s infrastructure was rendered inoperable, Reyes said. Large numbers of people had yet to receive assistance—particularly in outlying islands that neither the national government nor international agencies had been able to reach, she said.

One MSF team that went by plane to Guiuan described the damage as “extensive” and the needs of the people “immense.”

“The situation here is bleak. The [town] has been flattened—houses, medical facilities, rice fields, fishing boats all destroyed. People are living out in the open; there are no roofs left standing in the whole of Guiuan. The needs are immense and there are a lot of surrounding villages that are not yet covered by any aid organizations,” said Alexis Moens, the MSF’s assessment team leader.

Moens said the needs of the people were not just physical nutrition but also psychological care.

“Today, I met a man who lost his whole family. He was hospitalized because he tried to stab himself with a knife in the chest. Tragically, we hear these sorts of stories in many places. There are villages that have lost so many people and psychosocial assistance is going to be essential to help people rebuild their lives,” Moens recounted.

A team will return to Guiuan by helicopter Friday to treat the injured and provide water, shelter and relief items.

Another MSF team made an assessment of the situation in Roxas City and the surrounding towns, while a third team was already in Ormoc City and was surveying the situation in Western Leyte. The fourth MSF team drove to northern Cebu, where the local hospitals and health centers were already coping “relatively well,” and then boarded a ferry to Bantayan Island.

The MSF will have more than 100 on its staff, including doctors, nurses, surgeons, logisticians, psychologists and water and sanitation experts, in the area in the coming days, it said.

The first three of nine planeloads of medical supplies, shelter materials, hygiene kits and water and sanitation equipment dispatched to the Philippines from MSF warehouses around the world arrived in Cebu City on Thursday.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) also said it was joining moves to position its staff for a major relief effort on Samar Island.

From Allen, Northern Samar, the ICRC team traveled to Catbalogan City, then Guiuan and Borongan City, Eastern Samar.

“The island’s west coast has been spared from major destruction. However, along the south coast, from Santa Rita all the way down to Guiuan, the devastation is massive. Healthcare facilities in all the municipalities, including the public hospital in Guiuan, have suffered damage. Health posts have been set up by medical personnel to care for the incoming patients with what little means they have,” reported Gegham Petrosyan, the ICRC’s health coordinator in the Philippines.

The team said rain showers and reports of armed gunmen and looting “were making matters worse for an already exhausted population without shelter, food or potable water.”

“People are desperate for life-saving aid. However, logistical and security constraints continue to hamper the distribution of desperately needed relief,” Petrosayan added.

The ICRC has launched an appeal for 15 million Swiss francs (about P713 million) to bring aid to 36,000 households for three months.