Vanuatu islanders face starvation

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned that residents of one of Vanuatu’s biggest islands in the South Pacific, Tanna, are facing starvation within days, as all crops there have been destroyed by the recent Cyclone Pam.

Alice Clements, a spokesperson for UNICEF Pacific, based in Vanuatu’s capital, Port Vila, made the warning on Monday, two days after the archipelago was hit by the devastating storm.

“We have discovered that 100 percent of crops in Tanna have been destroyed. This means that this is an island with no food,” said Clements.

According to Vanuatuan officials, up to 80 percent of the entire population of Tanna has been displaced by the cyclone.

Clements said that aid workers had about a week to distribute food to the islanders “because after that, they have no food.”

Similar warnings have also been made by the humanitarian aid agency Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) and its affiliate CARE Australia.

Tom Perry from CARE Australia said impressions from initial observations showed that the damage on Tanna is “significantly worse than” in the capital Port Vila, where 90 percent of buildings were either destroyed or damaged by the storm.

This is while Vanuatu’s President Baldwin Lonsdale appealed on the same day for “immediate” help, as the destructive storm had “wiped out” all of the country’s developments in recent years and that the nation will have to rebuild “everything.”

Officials were struggling to determine the scale of damage from the cyclone, as radio and telephone communications with outer islands have not yet been re-established. Authorities dispatched every available plane and helicopter to fly over the hard-hit regions.

According to the latest figures from the United Nations, 24 people have died and 3,300 are displaced after the typhoon hit the South Pacific island nation on March 14.