Battling to bring winter relief

Emergency relief still hasn't reached many areas of rural Afghanistan suffering from avalanches and intense snow storms, IRIN learnt on Monday. Aid agencies, the United Nations and the Afghan government have been battling to assist thousands of victims of the unprecedented cold winter that has killed more than 500 people, mostly women and children, around the country. Aid workers said disease outbreaks, blocked roads and food shortages were the immediate problems. Roads blocked by snow have led to a delay in getting emergency assistance to nearly 61 districts in 19 provinces where access has been restricted by snowfalls, according to aid bodies. Although hundreds are reported dead in the coldest winter in the region in decades, officials at the Ministry of Health have confirmed only 200 deaths so far, mostly attributed to severe respiratory disease such as pneumonia, whooping cough and tuberculosis. Ministry officials said they had been trying to deploy health workers to badly affected areas using two military helicopters, but the aircraft were only of limited use due to the continuing appalling weather conditions, a spokesman said. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said 3,000 mt of food items had been distributed to vulnerable communities in 14 provinces. This amount included 40 mt of food airdropped late last week in the districts of Tulak and Saghar in the western Ghowr province. "There are many places where we are struggling to reach people hit by the worst winter in a decade," Ebadullah Ebadi, an information officer with WFP in Kabul, told IRIN. Ebadi said that in the past two weeks the food was distributed mainly in the central, east-central, southern, northeastern and western parts of the country. "Roads are so difficult to use that one WFP four-wheel-drive vehicle took seven hours to cover a 10 km distance in Ghowr province," he noted. WFP's efforts to help tens of thousands of Afghans who have been hit by the unusually harsh winter run parallel to the food agency's national programmes to provide food aid to nearly six million people around Afghanistan, Ebadi added. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said the situation was being tackled through a winter coordination group meeting every other day, bringing together representatives from nine government ministries, the coalition, the NATO-led protection force known as ISAF, USAID, UN agencies and other relevant organisations. According to UNAMA, emergency workers from the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD), the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) and UN agencies are currently working in 13 provinces to determine the most vulnerable people and their needs. "But there are still some areas which are hard to reach," Ariane Quentier, a UNAMA senior public information officer, told IRIN. Among the areas of greatest concern are the mountainous provinces of Badakhshan and Baghlan in the north and Nurestan, further south, she said. Meanwhile, 21 of 25 passes in the country were reopened after several days of work by Afghan Ministry of Public Works, Solidarités, the NGO in charge of the maintenance of three of the main passes in the central highlands region, and the United Nations Office for Project Service (UNOPS). But milder weather may bring little respite. There is a real potential for serious flooding as the great mass of snow covering most of the country starts to melt. Afghanistan has had to deal with floods in the past, but this year, aid workers said, risks are greater due to the increase in snow and ice.