(13 February, 2008)  Save the Children is urgently increasing its emergency response in Mozambique as fears grow that a new spate of flooding will batter the southern African country.

A further 1,500 cubic metres of water a second is heading towards the already swollen Zambezi River in Mozambique, following the opening of one of the six floodgates of the Kariba Dam on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The floodgate was opened on Monday to prevent damage to the dam by the huge build up of water. However the release of the gate could create

further chaos downstream in Mozambique, where 250,000 people are already dependent on emergency food aid, having already been forced to flee their homes by severe flooding in 2007 and January of this year.

Chris McIvor, Save the Children UK's  programme director in Mozambique, said:

 "This is the worst flooding we've seen since 2001, even exceeding the torrential rains of last year. With this mass of water heading down towards Mozambique, and two months of the rainy season still to come, communities are incredibly vulnerable. Over a quarter of a million people have already lost everything to flooding - their homes, their animals, their possessions. Many children are now out of school, and we expect these numbers to rise."

New flooding could threaten the major emergency effort which is already underway in Mozambique following January's flooding. Aid organisations such as Save the Children, as well as the government and the UN, are currently supporting a quarter of a million people with food, healthcare, shelter, water and sanitation and education, but this life-saving assistance may be hampered.

"Several areas we are working in are still inaccessible to anything but helicopters and large boats," said Mr McIvor. "This new surge of water could make access to these remote communities even harder, leaving them to fend for themselves with no safe shelter, access to clean water or means to get food."

Mr McIvor said:  "Several of the camps that have been set up to look after the thousands of families already forced to flee their homes this year will be under threat if the water gets much higher. This could mean a re-evacuation of people from existing camps to other centres, which would have to be built from scratch, creating further hardship and misery for parents and their children. The picture is equally frightening for the 150,000 people who fled the flooding last year, and are still stranded and dependent on food aid."

Save the Children is also warning of the possibility of a major cholera epidemic in the country.

McIvor continued: "We are extremely worried by reports of a recent outbreak of cholera. With so many people crowded together and with the rains and floods hampering access to some locations, the potential for a serious epidemic is very real. Save the Children will step up its health education programme and latrine construction work in the centres where we are working so as to limit the possibility of this happening."

Save the Children has been responding to the floods in Mozambique, including distributing food, mosquito nets, setting up safe spaces for children, distributing school kits.

More

For more information or interviews with Chris McIvor please contact the media unit on:

+44 207 012 6841 / +7831 650 409 (out of hours) / media@savethechildren.org.uk