Axios: Cyclone-lashed southern Africa needs more support for recovery
Gayle E. Smith, president and CEO of the ONE Campaign

“…The U.N. called [Cyclone] Idai ‘one of the worst natural disasters to hit southern Africa in living memory.’ Shortages of food and clean water and the risk of contracting fatal diseases like cholera or malaria only make the situation worse. Like the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the post-Idai emergency didn’t initially receive the attention crises of this scale often do, though the international humanitarian system has begun to respond. … Even the smallest shocks to regions like southern Africa can trigger vicious cycles of poverty, violence, and conflict — and the devastation caused by Cyclone Idai was anything but small. Hundreds of thousands of people now depend on a robust international response that will need to be sustained from emergency management through to rebuilding” (3/28).