ASIA/NEPAL – Months after the earthquake prime necessities still needed

Kathmandu (Agenzia Fides) – Despite a slight improvement in the humanitarian situation in the past three months, hundreds of children are still without shelter, food, water, sanitation, schooling and protection. Many children still live in areas at high risk of floods and landslides. Following the first earthquake as many as 10,000 children developed acute malnourishment, one thousand in serious conditions. Hundreds have lost one or both of their parents or care-person, 900,00 homes and 32 school buildings are still damaged or destroyed. Some three million people, including one million minors, still depend on humanitarian aid. UNICEF humanitarian aid is assisting some 330,000 families, including 450,00 children, in 19 districts most affected by the earthquake. It has also supplied aid to thousands of families living in remote areas, supplying tents, hygiene kits, therapeutic foods, vaccinations and other life-saving medicines, medical kits, bed nets, newborn packages, and school-in-a-box and early childhood development kits. Aid has enabled 100,000 children to return to school, provided clean water for 650,000 people at home or in camps, reopened 100 maternity centres in more than 150 medical centres, saved women and children from being taken out of the country illegally. (AP) (30/7/2015 Agenzia Fides).