UN team helps assess flooding in northern Ghana

(New York, 18 September): Today, United Nations emergency staff of the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team arrived in Tamale in northern Ghana, where they have established a humanitarian coordination centre, to support the government in assessing the impact of recent floods in the country. Today five teams comprised of government and aid agency personnel are assessing various areas in the Northern Region by road and by air.

The three-day joint assessment mission led by the Government, including national and international partners, began yesterday and will visit all the affected regions. The mission aims to gather further information on the number of people affected and/or displaced and to determine the impact of the floods on the humanitarian situation including food security. The United Nations Resident Coordinator, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) as well as UNDAC and staff from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) are taking part in the mission.

Flooding in Upper East, Upper West and Northern regions has killed 20 people and affected 260,000 according to the Government. The floods have caused the collapse of nine bridges and the destruction of water supply systems. Furthermore an unspecified quantity of crops and livestock has been lost, and some infrastructure such as schools and roads has been destroyed. Access in some areas is a concern due to damaged roads. There are additional concerns about a possible outbreak of waterborne diseases, with cases of diarrhoea, dysentery and cholera reported in the Upper East region. In view of the magnitude of floods, the Government of Ghana has declared a state of emergency in the three inundated regions.

The Ministry for the Interior has announced the establishment of an Inter-Ministerial Disaster Relief Committee and district task force teams to oversee activities in their respective communities. So far, the Government has distributed several tons of relief items in affected areas. The Ghana Navy has also deployed equipment and a team who will assist with the ferrying of goods and persons to and from the cut-off areas.

United Nations organisations are evaluating the most effective means to ensure the arrival of a large consignment of emergency supplies including food, and also non-food items such as tents, blankets, tarpaulins and water purification supplies, generators, jerry cans, drinking water filters, mobile sanitary facilities, mosquito nets and other relief supplies. The Ghanaian Government provided the Presidential jet plane to the joint assessment team to travel from Accra to Tamale. From Tamale to the affected areas (district level) the mission is travelling on two helicopters facilitated by the French Embassy.

The UNDAC team, along with Telecoms sans Frontieres (TSF) and MapAction, were deployed to Ghana to support the Government's emergency response operations in the affected areas. OCHA's Regional Office for West Africa (ROWA) has also fielded a team to support humanitarian coordination activities.

More than one million people have been affected by recent flooding in 17 countries in Africa, 650,000 have lost their homes, and 200 have been killed.

For further information, please call: Stephanie Bunker, OCHA-New York, +1 917 367 5126, mobile +1 917 892 1679; Dizery Salim, OCHA-New York, +1 917 367 9262; Elisabeth Byrs, OCHA-Geneva, +41 22 917 2653, mobile, +41 79 473 4570. OCHA press releases are available at http://ochaonline.un.org or www.reliefweb.int.