Bangladesh cyclone: Now food shortage threatens millions

For the people of Bangladesh, there seems little respite from poverty and misery, some of it the result of man and much of it the work of nature.

With aid teams still trying to get emergency supplies to those affected by Cyclone Sidr – a massive storm that struck 10 days ago, killing 3,200 – officials have said up to three million people risk being short of food for the next six months. The storm, the biggest for more than a decade, destroyed between 50 and 90 per cent of the region's rice crop.

"Thousands of families are facing the real possibility of a second wave of deaths that can result from lack of clean water, food, shelter and medical supplies," said Kelly Stevenson, the Bangladesh director of Save the Children.

Every year, thousands are killed in Bangladesh in floods or storms. Not surprisingly, those most at risk are the poor, whose dwellings are the least substantial and often located in the most vulnerable areas.

Yet sometimes the most basic measures can help. Officials say that the death toll could have been much higher if the authorities had not acted to warn people of the impending storm. One of the most basic warning systems involved dispatching volunteers equipped with megaphones to cycle around local communities urging people to take shelter.

Indeed, up to 40,000 volunteers with the Red Crescent Society were involved in warning residents to move into the 1,800 cyclone shelters and 440 flood shelters set up. As a result, when Sidr struck the coastline on 15 November, two million people were already taking shelter.

"It's as low-tech as you get ... basically a project centred around preparing people for disasters by using community-based volunteers who do everything from street theatre to school education and lectures to women's groups," said Dhupinder Powar, of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in Geneva.

The Bangladeshi government has promised that it will be able to feed more than two million people made homeless and destitute by the storm with 33lb of rice a month each, starting on 1 December, a programme expected to last at least four months.

At the same time, while more than $450m (£220m) in aid has been pledged from the international community, emergency workers are still struggling to get immediate aid to the worst-affected areas. This weekend, the US is preparing to help deliver food and medical supplies. USS Kearsarge has arrived close to the Bangladeshi coast and a second ship, the USS Essex, is expecting to arrive in the coming days.