How UNICEF is helping

Maldives

© UNICEF/HQ05-0042/Horner

Workers offload UNICEF supplies for victims of the tsunami disaster from an ECHO-funded flight that has just arrived at the international airport in Male, the capital of Maldives.

11 April 2005
Key UNICEF Actions

Working closely with government and partners, UNICEF has:

Health and Nutrition

• Provided vaccines for routine immunizations and procured supplies to implement the regular nationwide de-worming and vitamin A supplementation campaign for 35,000 children.
• Supplied immediate food relief for 500 children evacuated from the capital and the most affected islands.
• Provided a six-month supply of food relief for 1,750 children aged 6-24 months, along with 5,000 cooking sets for families.
  

Child Protection

• Distributed recreational kits to affected areas and provided counseling for parents on how to help their children cope with psychological distress.
• Carried out a training programme for teachers to support children who are distressed. The use of creative arts activities has proven helpful for children to express their fears and worries.

Education

• Built temporary classrooms in temporary settlements and in areas where damaged schools are still unsafe.
• Provided basic school equipment, supplies and consumables to replace damaged or lost items in 116 primary and secondary schools.
• Funded the replacement of students’ uniforms, footwear and textbooks.
• Delivered 200 school-in-a-box kits and 89 recreational and early childhood kits. With UNICEF’s support, all school children were back in school only two weeks after the normal start date for the academic year.
  

Water and Sanitation

• Helped to meet the immediate and short term water and sanitation needs for 85,000 people on 69 islands (28% of the total population), whose freshwater supply was destroyed by the tsunami.
• Supplied drinking and cooking water, basic family water kits, sanitary products for women and infants, soap, detergents, disinfectants and waste management bags.
• Carried out hygiene and sanitation awareness campaigns in affected areas.
• Began the rehabilitation of water and sanitation facilities in schools, including the installation of water storage tanks to cover 24 schools and 6,000 students.

Key UNICEF supplies procured offshore

• Basic family water kits for 14,540 families. Each kit contains buckets, soap, water containers, water purification tablets and disinfectant.
• Hygiene kits providing 4,000 couples with basic supplies such as toothbrushes, soap, towels, detergent and toilet paper for one month.
• School-in-a-box kits containing basic school supplies for 16,000 children.
• Recreation kits for 24,000 children. Each kit contains balls for several types of games, frisbees, skipping ropes, coloured tunics for different teams, chalk and a measuring tape for marking play areas and a whistle and scoring slate.
• Cooking sets for families to use during emergencies. UNICEF has shipped 5,000 cooking sets to Maldives. Each set contains cooking pots, bowls and cups.