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STORY: GENEVA / HURRICANE DORIAN UPDATE
TRT: 1:30
SOURCE: UNTV CH
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 6 SEPTEMBER 2019, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
1. Med shot, UN Geneva flag alley
2. Med shot, press room, journalists (seated), podium
3. Med shot, journalists in profile
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Ian Norton, Manager, Emergency Medical Teams, World health Organization (WHO):
“I can’t tell you that we’ve got to every single atoll and sand key but certainly the major sections of each island have been reached. We’ve certainly seen reports more and more on the health side coming in that they’re looking at shelter, food and trying to assess what populations are left where.”
5. Close up, handwriting on lined notepad
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Ian Norton, Manager, Emergency Medical Teams, World health Organization (WHO):
“We now know that the hospital in Freeport which is on Grand Bahama is severely flooded with sewage-contaminated water, and so therefore it needs to be temporarily replaced with a field hospital.”
7. Close up, journalist looking down
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Ian Norton, Manager, Emergency Medical Teams, World health Organization (WHO):
“We certainly expect the death toll to rise; I can’t tell you what that would be, but we’re really worried about it.”
9. Close up, hands typing on laptop in foreground, podium blurred in background
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Ian Norton, Manager, Emergency Medical Teams, World health Organization (WHO):
“What we see, and what we’ve seen unfortunately in this devastating storm surge, especially in a stationary storm produces what you could see maybe after a tsunami. And what we don’t see in those cases is injuries as such, we see unfortunately a lot of people drowned and losing their lives drowning or surviving.”
11. Various shots, journalists
As the UN and other aid partners respond to huge humanitarian needs in the hurricane-struck Bahamas, latest reports indicate that the death toll is likely to rise, the head of an emergency medical relief team said today.
Ian Norton, Manager of the World Health Organization (WHO) Emergency Medical Teams Initiative, told journalists in Geneva, “we certainly expect the death toll to rise, I can’t tell you what that would be, but we’re really worried about it.”
Norton said, “what we see, and what we’ve seen unfortunately in this devastating storm surge, especially in a stationary storm produces what you could see maybe after a tsunami,”
He added, “and what we don’t see in those cases is injuries as such, we see unfortunately a lot of people drowned and losing their lives drowning or surviving.”
To date, 30 people are confirmed to have died after Hurricane Dorian hit the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama last weekend with maximum wind speeds of 297 kilometres per hour (185 miles per hour).
According to the Government, thousands are still missing after the Category 5 storm brought with it a storm surge of 18 to 23 feet high (5.5 to seven metres) and 76,000 people are believed to be homeless.
Other immediate needs include treating people with chronic illnesses, such as those with diabetes and kidney failure, Dr Norton explained.
He said, “we now know that the hospital in Freeport which is on Grand Bahama is severely flooded with sewage-contaminated water, and so therefore it needs to be temporarily replaced with a field hospital.”
Amid reports that many other medical centres are flooded, international health teams are arriving in the Bahamas to provide clinical care and help survivor to secure food supplies, safe drinking water and sanitation.
Norton said, “I can’t tell you that we’ve got to every single atoll and sand key but certainly the major sections of each island have been reached,” adding that “we’ve certainly seen reports more and more on the health side coming in that they’re looking at shelter, food and trying to assess what populations are left where.”
The extreme level of destruction has been attributed by UN weather experts the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to the fact that Dorian “remained stationary, thus exacerbating the impacts of the hazards: wind, rain, waves and storm surge.”
In a statement issued today, UN Migration Agency IOM said that only minimal information was available from the affected islands and that more detailed assessments of people’s requirements are needed.
Among its priorities, the agency is providing 1,000 tarpaulins to replace roofs “stripped” from homes by the hurricane.
Citing official sources, IOM said that some 449 people are in nine emergency shelters in Abaco and 346 in 17 shelters in Grand Bahama.
