According to Sri Lanka’s Disaster Management Center (DMC), at least 390 people have been killed and more than 350 are missing after Tropical Cyclone Ditwah made landfall on Thursday, bringing heavy rainfall and destructive winds across the country. The storm triggered widespread flooding and landslides, believed to be the worst in recent history. Over 1.3 million people have been affected across all 25 districts. As of Tuesday, approximately 215,000 people have been displaced and are sheltering in over 1,300 government-run safety centers.
Half of families in Sri Lanka are forced to reduce the amount they feed their children, according to a survey by the humanitarian organization Save the Children International, as the country’s economic downturn spirals further into a full-blown hunger crisis nearly a year after the government defaulted on its debt. The non-governmental organization (NGO) said today the government and international community must act now to prevent the country’s children from becoming a lost generation.
The economic crisis in Sri Lanka is turning into one of the country's worst humanitarian crises in decades, while 6.7 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) warned in a statement today. Millions of families are facing shortages of food, fuel, cooking gas, essential supplies and medicines as the humanitarian impact of the economic crisis continues to multiply.
