The Mercy Corps Blog
A daily look into the work, thoughts and ideas of our team around the world.
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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Donate now to provide emergency assistance to families displaced by conflict between the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil Tiger rebels
About Paul Armour
Paul Armour is Mercy Corps' country director in Sri Lanka, based in Colombo.
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