CHINA: Evacuee children in China need to play to take their minds off the shock of the quake

Record ID: 858770

  • Title: CHINA: Evacuee children in China need to play to take their minds off the shock of the quake
  • Date: 27th May 2008
  • Summary: (BN04) MIANYANG, SICHUAN PROVINCE, CHINA (MAY 26, 2008) (REUTERS) CHILDREN PLAYING PICK-UP-STICKS
  • Embargoed: 11th June 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: China
  • City:
  • Country: China
  • Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes,Lifestyle
  • Reuters ID: LVAE2U8N2J4KY0S1PH1G5FANX0JN
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: Life in Sichuan's temporary camps is cramped and uncomfortable with little to do for residents but wait, two weeks after the 7.9 magnitude earthquake.
    Children's organisations, including Save the Children, have moved into the camps, setting up play areas and training volunteers in child caring.
    Large camps such as Mianzhu house thousands of evacuees, but tents are still in short supply and one tent can hold up to 10 people.
    With such large groups of people in a condensed space the spread of disease is a constant worry. Children living in the camps have little entertainment and no structure to the daily life.
    Deborah Barry, Save the Children's Global Advisor for Child Protection, is training a team of volunteers to help the children recovering from the trauma of the quake. She says the children are resilient and will recover, as long as their minds are kept busy.
    Chinese soldiers are working around the clock to dig a giant sluice to ease pressure on swelling "earthquake lakes" and evacuate 100,000 people to avert a new disaster, state media said.
    The authorities have started to divert water from some of the 35 lakes, formed after landslides blocked rivers, through man-made water channels.
    Two aftershocks jolted west China on Tuesday (May 27), measuring magnitude 5.4 and 5.7 on the Richter scale respectively, striking Qingchuan county in Sichuan Province and Ning county of Shaanxi.
    State television showed footage of people rushing on to the streets and dust rising from the hills around the town. No casualties are reported yet.
    Chinese health authorities face a tough job to prevent disease outbreaks in areas hard hit by May 12's massive earthquake, but are confident they can stop large-scale epidemics, officials said.
    To head off an epidemic, the government has dispatched more than 90,000 health workers to Sichuan, disinfected huge areas and rushed vaccines for cholera and rabies, among other diseases, to the scene, the health ministry said in a statement.
    The disaster also destroyed a large part of Sichuan's health monitoring system, although there have yet to be reports of epidemics from teams sent in to plug this hole.
    The sheer scale of the problem, coupled with the warming weather, could exacerbate the health issues, Qi Xiaoqiu, head of the ministry's disease control bureau said.
    "Now we are in the period when diseases spread during the summer, and even in normal times, the numbers of outbreaks would be high," he said.
    Teams of health workers had been sent into villages with solar-powered mobile telephones to report any signs of epidemics to ensure that outbreaks get reported promptly despite the damage to Sichuan's health infrastructure, Qi added.
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