The Mercy Corps Blog

Blog Post Posted July 8, 2009, 8:34 am by Paul Armour

Drinking water for Sri Lanka's IDPs

We're now supplying filtered drinking water to more than 46,000 displaced people in northern Sri Lanka — and a 100-bed hospital.

These are some of the reconditioned ST1 Water Filtration Units we're using to filter drinking water for more than 46,000 people living in displacement camps in northern Sri Lanka. Photo: Mercy Corps

As of July 1, all four of our large water-filtration units have been installed in one of northern Sri Lanka's largest camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs). Three are operational, producing clean drinking water to more than 46,000 people between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. daily. Sri Lanka's water-supply agency provides tankers for us to deliver the water to families.

We're also supplying water to a 100-bed hospital.
 
Mercy Corps and our partner, ISB, currently work in one of the 19 camps in Vavuniya, a town in northern Sri Lanka. Our camp is commonly referred to as Zone 1, and is the second-largest of 19 camp zones.  Zone 1 includes 15,319 families, or a total population of 46,675. 
 
We're continuing to design our hygiene-promotion program with the Ministry of Health. It's intended to train families on how to prevent waterborne disease in the camp. We expect to roll out the campaign by month's end.
 
Donors gave generously online to get this emergency project off the ground. But we still need your help to do more. Please consider a gift to the Sri Lanka Emergency Fund.

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Blog Post Posted June 16, 2009, 8:44 am by Paul Armour

Providing clean water to Sri Lanka's displaced

An armed Sri Lankan policeman stands guard behind Tamil families during U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's tour of the refugee camp called Manik Farm on the outskirts of the northern Sri Lankan town of Vavuniya in May 2009. Photo: Reuters/Louis Charbonneau, courtesy www.alertnet.org

Hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans are still living in densely populated camps following last month's end to the island's 26-year civil war.

Conditions in the camps are improving, but there's still not enough clean water and safe sanitation, according to the UN.

Mercy Corps is helping to fill these gaps by installing water-filtration systems — together with our local partner, ISB Services Limited — that will meet the daily drinking-water needs of 40,000 camp residents. ITT Watermark supplied the units.

We're also launching an effort to spread good hygiene habits to contain diseases such as typhoid, cholera and dengue fever. The oncoming monsoon season heightens the risk of disease spreading through the camps, and children are among the most vulnerable.

Donors gave generously online to get this emergency project off the ground. But we still need your help to do more.

Additional funding would allow us to build emergency latrines to restore a sense of dignity to the lives of camp residents, and to further guard against the spread of deadly diseases.

Eventually, our focus will turn to families who'll need our help to recover what they've lost and rebuild their lives. Thank you for standing with them in this time of need.

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