Three weeks after the floodwaters pulled back from Nasarawa State, residents have returned home to find very little waiting for them. Makeshift shelters have replaced what were once family homes, and with no clean water in sight, many are drinking straight from the same rivers that flooded their communities. The result is predictable and heartbreaking: malaria and typhoid are spreading fast.
Hunger is the other crisis running quietly alongside the illness. Farmlands that sustained these communities through seasons are still waterlogged or destroyed, and food supplies have not been replenished. For many families, there is simply nothing to eat.
The government promised relief, but it has not arrived. Displaced residents are waiting, and every day that passes without aid is a day the health situation grows harder to reverse. The question everyone in these communities is asking is a simple one: how much longer?
Originally published by AllAfrica.