The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) provided emergency food parcels to more than 300 displaced families after Colombia’s highest volcano, Nevado del Huila, erupted last month. The eruption affected 12,000 people with ADRA currently providing aid to 1,700 of them.
Nevado del Huila’s eruption on November 20 spewed gas and hot ash into the air, melting snow, and causing mud, rocks, and floodwater to rush down to the River Paez, destroying homes, bridges, and crops, and isolating farmland, villages, and indigenous communities in the region.
Families with disabled members, elderly citizens, women-headed households and people who lost their homes and belongings are receiving food parcels filled with rice, red beans, vegetable oil, corn flour, sugar cane bars, and iodized salt. Each parcel will provide a family of five with enough food for two weeks.
ADRA Colombia is working with the Colombian Red Cross to bring the emergency goods from Popayán, the provincial capital of Cauca, to the town of Guadualejo, a distance of 56 miles. The supplies are transported by mule to the targeted area 6 miles away.
ADRA is also responding to a cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe, an epidemic that has killed 783 people since August, according to the United Nations. They are currently providing prevention training, health and hygiene education, and distributing disinfectants, water treatment tablets and water containers.
The organization is targeting 500 families, or approximately 2,500 people, in the Harare suburb of Kuwadzana, where residents often use open sewers for drinking water, and Chendambuya, a rural area in the Manicaland province.
ADRA is also providing supplies to medical facilities, including oral rehydration tablets, latex gloves, antibiotics, analgesics, anti-diarrheal solutions and tablets and cleaning agents.
For more information, visit adra.org