IDP influx

16,000 IDPs walked at least 25km to our part of Batticaloa from the west of the district on Friday and Saturday to avoid shelling and anticipated military intervention. They join tens of thousands who have already arrived since March 1 - overburdening the camps that have already received 80,000 people displaced (in many cases twice) from further north.




Two of the IDPs.




IDP registration supervised by the local authority (left) at a hastily comandeered school.




IDPs waiting in the school for shelter to be prepared in one of the Batticaloa IDP camps.




Their camp will have to be provided with tents, food, toilets, and water. Tents are easy to stockpile and take 20 minutes to erect. Everything else takes days to provide and is expensive to replenish.




Some camps can be provided with sufficient water from quickly dug wells while others depend on daily water bowsering (this was a new word for me too). While IDPs are tired, under-nourished and overcrowded they face increased medical vulnerability. Merlin is the focal point for health care in the Batticaloa camps where we train and support a network of Community Based Volunteers. We are also instituting a systematic disease surveillance system.


The IDPs waiting in this school will have no access for even basic provisions and services until they can be moved to one of the over-stretched camps.