Written by: George Fominyen
N'DJAMENA (AlertNet) - Chad began providing relief this week to 3,200 families who fled their homes when River Chari burst its banks, raising fears a cholera outbreak would spread as floodwaters inundate neighbourhoods in the capital.
Experts fear the river, which burst its banks earlier this month, could breach its banks again and flood bigger areas of the capital N'Djamena, home to about 800,000 inhabitants.
In the city's Walia district, flooding submerged a market as men and women broke the walls of their mud-and-brick homes to make dykes and canoes ferried people to work and school.
"We are living outside our house, we don't know where to go," said 37-year-old Sophie Karga, who has seven children.
The U.N. Children's Agency (UNICEF) has warned that a cholera outbreak that has infected about 4,000 people and killed at least 135 across Chad, may deepen as floodwaters sweep contaminated water from latrines into wells.
Chadian crisis response teams have been handing out bags of rice, blankets, mats and jerry cans to affected communities.
One of their temporary sites has been set up next to a cholera treatment centre managed by the international charities Medecins Sans Frontieres and Oxfam-Intermon, which have been dealing with cases of the acute diarrhoeal disease in this neighbourhood.
"People may lose their homes but they should not be contaminated with cholera at the same time," said Christophe Toua, a resident of Walia who is now living with his family on aluminium roofing sheets from his house.
Experts say the threat of climate-related flooding and other natural disasters would increase in the years to come and governments need to revamp their response strategies and disaster mitigation plans.
"We've seen the adverse effect of climate change. First of all, increased temperatures and drought followed by intense unexpected and extraordinarily violent rains that generated floods," Marzio Babille, UNICEF's Chad country representative, told AlertNet.
These intense changes added to poor sanitation and housing, and weak environmental protection of rivers and streams means more people are likely to be affected by this severe weather patterns, he said.
"This situation could have been handled if there was a dam but the cost of such a project was too high for the government in the past ... we hope to make another request for one now," said Pierre Ngolfou, the head of the local crisis response committee.
For now, Chadian military and firefighters have been filling sand bags to create dykes to stem the flow of water into the Walia neighbourhood, which is located on the delta of the rivers Logone and Chari that flow into Lake Chad.
Local authorities have said they will discourage people from resettling in the area, especially as most have built their homes on the river bed or extremely close to its banks.
This may prove difficult.
"If the government knows what they can do for us let them do it ... but I can't leave my house ... where would I go to?" said Fatoumata Moussa, a mother of 10, who has been breaking the walls of her home to dam the rising waters.
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