Thousands of Flood Victims Still Need Help , Official Says

About 40,000 people in and near Accra are still feeling the effects of floods that swept coastal Ghana in late June, a senior official of Ghana's National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) said on Friday.

Asomaning Odei Mensah, NADMO's deputy director for relief and reconstruction, told IRIN that with help from the international community, his organisation has been providing relief for 15,000 people "severely affected" by the floods. "Severely affected", he said, meant people who had lost their homes and/or all or most of their belongings. Among the hardest hit were people who lived along gullies and whose property was swept away by the flood waters.

The remaining 25,000 flood victims also need help, he said, but there were not enough resources available to assist them.

The floods, caused by heavy rains on 28 June, swamped much of Accra and areas in nearby Central Region. There was also some isolated flooding in Kumasi, Ghana's second largest city, and the western town of Takoradi. In the Accra area, most of the flood waters have receded, but not all, and some people are still unable to return to their homes, Mensah said. He said he did not know exactly how many people were still displaced.

Mensah said UN agencies, such as UNICEF, UNDP and WHO, had donated relief items for the worst affected people. The German Embassy in Ghana has also asked for details of relief items needed. These, he said, included rice, beans, cooking oil, mattresses, blankets, mats, and used clothing for children as well as adults.

Water sources have been purified with chlorine provided by UNICEF, which has also donated 20 water tanks with a capacity of some 7,000 litres each. These have been sent to the most distressed areas, he said. He added that a few cholera cases were detected and these had been treated.

Japan has offered to help rebuild bridges, schools and clinics. Mensah said relief officials began assessing the damage done by the floods to such infrastructure on Thursday and were due to complete it on Monday.