Disease a Risk Post-Flood UN Reports

After many months of drought conditions rains finally returned to Burundi this past September, only they returned with a vengeance, uprooting crops in the loose, dry soil and placing all else under water. Besides the closing of schools and the loss of homes due to the flooding there are far more pressing issues to deal with such as death from diarrhea and cholera (mostly a water-borne illness from improperly treated sources). Picutred left is a young boy in Gatumba, a city close to the capital of Bujumbura.

The floods have put an added strain on an already tense situation in the small country in central Africa. As a result of large crop loss international aid organizations such as the UN World Food Programme have encouraged others to committ "to [providing] food aid for 2 million Burundians, almost one third of the population, between now and the next harvest later this year."

I'm reminded of the massive flooding of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in that, while the situations are unique to their own circumstances, natural disasters often exacerbate problems already inherent within a society. Here, we were reminded that while de jure segregation may be something of the past de facto (perhaps the more sinister of the two because it persists despite the law) segregation still lingers as there is no denying that those affected most severely by the flooding were disproportionately African-Americans in poorer sections of the city. In Burundi, there is no telling quite yet just what the outcome will be but unless others makes a long-term committment to aid the troubled population things could spin violently out of hand as people compete for scarce resources.