We've all been following the devastating news about the earthquake in China. 67,000 people have died and 5 million have been displaced, schools have collapsed and entire villages have been buried by landslides.
Though the earthquake struck three weeks ago, the emergency is still happening. Children and their families are threatened by aftershocks and flooding, and survivors are also facing a second crisis: Many children are terribly traumatized by what happened to them, and those that are living in displaced persons camps or are homeless are vulnerable to the spread of disease. Often, it is the aftermath of a disaster that poses the greatest threat to children's lives.
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| © UNICEF China |
| UNICEF staff member Kirsten Di Martino talks with boys who have shown signs of withdrawal due to their traumatic experiences. UNICEF helped organize a psychosocial support mission with the Chinese government to assess the status of children affected by the quake. |
UNICEF, which has a permanent presence in China, has been helping the victims of the Sichuan Province earthquake from the beginning. The 100 tons of health and nutritional supplies for children and pregnant women, which we just shipped, arrived safely on Friday. We are also training volunteers and caretakers to make sure that traumatized children get the psychosocial support they need. If children are able to attend school, play and get a sense of normalcy back in their lives, they are almost always able to recover. Jen Banbury's recent blog post talks more about dealing with trauma after the China earthquake, as does this feature story.
UNICEF is in China for the long haul. We're not only supplying emergency aid like food, temporary classrooms, medicine and sanitation facilities, but will help rebuild the schools that so tragically collapsed during the quake, and are making sure that children get the help they need to recover. If you would like to support UNICEF's work to help children affected by the quake, you can donate directly to UNICEF's emergency relief program in China. Because we all know this emergency is far from over, and that there is still much work to be done.
