More evacuees from Zamboanga get ARMM aid

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - Three hundred more evacuees in Zamboanga City stricken with various ailments have availed  themselves of free services by doctors of the Humanitarian Emergency Action and Response Team (HEART) of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, regional officials said Monday.

The evacuees who were provided HEART’s medical services the past two days were from Zamboanga City’s adjoining Barangays Guisao and Talon-Talon, according to Laisa Alamia, ARMM executive secretary.

Alamia said HEART workers, composed of employees of the ARMM’s health, social welfare, education, and local government departments, also dispersed food packs and hygiene kits to the evacuees.

The hygiene kits the ARMM government has been distributing to evacuees were supplied by the Mindanao office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR).

The UNHCR  has been supporting the ARMM’s relief and humanitarian missions in flashpoint areas in the region that are often rocked by armed conflicts and hit by floods.

Alamia said ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman, who is the overall chief of the HEART’s operation, dispatched to Zamboanga City last week an additional 20-member team of health workers from the Lanao del Sur Integrated Provincial Health Office to help in the relief works for thousands of evacuees.

“The HEART is operating in close coordination with the office of Zamboanga City Mayor Isabelle Climaco,” Alamia said.

Physician Alinader Minalang, chief of the Lanao del Sur’s IPHO, said most of the patients they treated while in Barangays Talon-Talon and Guisao were afflicted with respiratory tract infections, dysentery, hypertension, and skin diseases.

“This can be attributed to the poor condition in evacuation sites, lack of proper nourishment, and tension due to the raging conflict in their surrounding,” Minalang said.   - John Unson