Peru braces for crisis as mercury plummets
Blogged by: Tim Large
A Chopcca Indian farmer in the village of Aymara, in the Andean highlands of the Huancavelica. File photo by REUTERS/Mariana Bazo.
High in the Andes of central and southern Peru, it gets bone-achingly cold. But this winter is harsher than usual. As the temperature falls as low as minus 25 degrees Centigrade (minus 13 Fahrenheit), the government has declared a state of emergency.
In the catalogue of natural disasters, cold weather rarely ranks alongside floods, earthquakes and hurricanes. But 2 million Peruvians are now hunkering down to endure the icy blasts, and the government says it is considering evacuating people living higher than 4,000 metres (13,000 feet) above sea level.
According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), which is mounting an emergency response, some 200,000 have been directly affected by the emergency.
About 50 children under five have already died of pneumonia and the threat of respiratory diseases grows with every downward notch on the thermometer. Antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and cough medicines are in short supply.
Meanwhile, the threat to food security remains acute as extreme frosts and heavy snow hit crops. The IFRC says 54,000 hectares of cropland have been written off, affecting 91,000 people. Farm animals are dying too, depriving farmers an important part of their income.
Many children in mountainous Peru are malnourished, making them more susceptible to winter's wrath. Poverty has left people of all ages illequipped to deal with the cold. Many lack warm clothes, blankets and non-perishable foods. Some families will try to survive the long nights by sleeping by their kitchen hearths, exposing them to smoke.
And the worst is yet to come. Peru's winter runs June to September, with the coldest month being July.
Cold kills in the same way that other natural disasters do - by pushing already vulnerable people over the edge. It destroys livelihoods and overstretches fragile coping mechanisms. But with adequate preparation and a relatively small outlay of emergency supplies, deaths can be prevented.
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Tim Large has been AlertNet's deputy editor since 2003. Prior to that, he was a correspondent with Reuters in Tokyo, a staff writer on a major Japanese daily and news editor of a popular science website. He has written widely on politics, economics, social issues and the arts. He is also a passionate photographer.
