Diseases, malnutrition stalk evac centers

PARANG, Maguindanao -- Disease, malnutrition, lack of provisions and bad weather hound the evacuation sites here, now housing more than 40,000 people.

Worse, the agency that has been actively overseeing most of the relief works for the displaced people -- the Integrated Provincial Health Office in Maguindanao -- is yet to receive the April allocation for its maintenance and operating expenses.

Thousands more of evacuees are now sheltered in school buildings in Pagalungan town, according to physician Tahir Bulaik, chief of IPHO-Maguindanao.

Soldiers and Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels continue to figure in intermittent clashes in many parts of Central Mindanao, pounding each other's position with heavy firepower.

Sulaik said they have treated a big number of evacuees with respiratory ailments, skin diseases and diarrhea, and they are now running out of medicines.

Pons Saman, municipal secretary of Matanog town, said even if all the available resources for the relief works are pooled, these could still not sustain the efforts even just for two weeks more.

Bai Sandra Sema, education secretary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said the ARMM's Regional Disaster Coordinating Council, which she chairs, needs at least 1,780 bags of rice daily to feed the evacuees in Maguindanao alone.

"The evacuation started April 28 and until now people have not stopped fleeing from their homes," Sema said.

Sulaik said some children of the displaced families are now showing signs of malnutrition.

"And when they become malnourished, they will become very vulnerable to diseases too," Sulaik said. "This is the ugly face of war we don't want to see -- the children suffering from its brunt."

Fr. Bert Layson, parish priest of North Cotabato's Pikit town, said two pre-schoolers from Paidu Pulangi District of his parish had died of dysentery and measles while in an evacuation center.

Layson said most of the evacuees in Pikit sleep on concrete floors of the buildings where they are housed.

"Some of those in makeshift shelters even sleep on the ground without mats," Layson said.