Summary: CHF 122,297 (USD 124,389 or EUR 92,163) has been allocated from the IFRC's Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF) to support the Ghana Red Cross Society (GRCS) in delivering immediate assistance to some 3,000 households. Unearmarked funds to repay DREF are encouraged.
The heavy rains in the northern regions of Ghana in September and early October 2010 have caused heavy flooding with huge human and material damages in the affected areas. Regions most affected were Northern, Upper East, Upper West, Brong Ahafo, Eastern and Western.
In response to the disaster, GRCS mobilized and deployed its volunteers in the regions to provide First-Aid service and psychological counselling to the affected population. The volunteers also assisted some of the affected persons with evacuation. The National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) in Ghana has been collaborating with other humanitarian actors such as the Red Cross to provide relief assistance to the affected population and assisting them in relocating to temporary shelter camps provided by the authorities in the affected communities.
In view of the recent situation in these regions, the GRCS with support from the IFRC and the Swiss Red Cross is providing relief assistance to the most affected people in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions of the country. The National Society (NS) has procured non-food items (NFIs) including blankets, hygiene kits, water purification items, mosquito nets, farming tools, shelter kits including tarpaulins as well as family kits to target beneficiaries. The NS through its volunteers has been working in collaboration with NADMO to carry out sanitation and good hygiene sensitization in the affected communities to prevent outbreak of epidemics.
During this reporting period, the IFRC regional disaster response team (RDRT) deployed member and the planning and reporting Officer of the West Coast Regional Representation to support the NS disaster management team in revising the plan of action. The revised plan of the action now takes into account the SPHERE standards in relief distribution and is also well align with budget. Through the revised plan, the GRCS will be assisting 1,500 families with basic NFIs while the Swiss Red Cross will be assisting 499 families with NFIs in the three target regions. The sensitization activities on good hygiene practices still target 3,000 households in the target communities. The regional branches of the GRCS have also trained selected 200 Red Cross volunteers who will be deployed during the distribution phase as the NS has commenced registering and issuing ration cards to the 1,500 vulnerable most affected using well defined selection criteria. The GRCS is also working in collaboration with other humanitarian actors like the WFP, UNHCR among others in the affected regions.
This operation is expected to be implemented over three months, and will therefore be completed by 31 December, 2010; a Final Report will be made available three months after the end of the operation (by 31 March, 2011).