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THERE IS ONE stark image that will forever sum up for me the devastation caused by Cyclone Idai.
Days after the Cyclone hit Zimbabwe on 15 March, ripping through the country, I was in a village in the Chimanimani district six hours from Harare which had been completely destroyed.
Homes were buried under huge boulders which had trundled down the mountains in an avalanche caused by torrential rains.
I came across a man who was lifting rocks one by one. When I asked what he was doing, he said he was searching for the body of his missing child.
He had already found the bodies of two of his other children under the rubble. Devastated, he said:
All I want now is to find my son and bury him the decent way
That moment will never leave me.
It is hard to describe the utter devastation and impact of what the UN has said was the worst natural disaster to ever hit the Southern Hemisphere.
Homes were destroyed. Livelihoods wiped out. Mothers, fathers, sons and daughters killed and missing. In Zimbabwe alone, 270,000 people have been affected
I have been Country Director for GOAL Zimbabwe for the past two years, based in Harare. I distinctly remember getting that first call from one of our staff about the cyclone.
It was 6 am on Saturday, 16 March and I was at home. Our staff described how the cyclone had hit and said a number of refugees had moved to higher ground out of the refugee camp where we have a programme.
Immediately after that, I got a call from our team in another district to say the local authorities were asking GOAL for support.
We needed to do a rapid assessment of the situation to help establish how many families had their homes destroyed and how many people were missing or dead.
Because we were already working in these districts, GOAL was one of the first agencies to respond to Cyclone Idai in Zimbabwe.
We were fortunate that GOAL headquarters in Dublin was able to rapidly raise some funds, which allowed us to mobilise and provide immediate support to the stricken families and communities.
In the two months since the cyclone hit, GOAL Zimbabwe has been able to support over 80,000 people with a combination of inputs ranging from food aid and non-food items such as soap, buckets, jerry cans, and water chemicals – all with a staff count of 82.
Prior to the cyclone, it was already estimated that approximately 60% of the harvest in Manicaland Province in Zimbabwe was going to be lost due to drought and the infestation of the crops by the fall armyworm pest.
Since the cyclone hit, the few crops that these communities were going to be able to harvest, have been washed away or flooded with water and mud, resulting in total loss of crops. Stored cereals that were soaked in water were unfit for consumption.
In most irrigation schemes, boreholes were submerged. This will reduce the irrigable area unless rehabilitation is carried out quickly.
The UN estimates that there are approximately 5.3 million people in Zimbabwe in urgent need of humanitarian assistance and protection. This includes nearly 3.8 million people in rural areas, 2.9 million who are severely food insecure.
Today, two months after the cyclone hit, thousands of people have received immediate aid from various aid agencies including GOAL.
However, the next few months are looking bleak for these communities.
They have barely had time to process the emotional and financial loss due to the cyclone because they have been too preoccupied ensuring that those left behind have enough food to take them through the next agricultural season.
The toll of this cyclone in Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique goes much deeper than the pictures we’ve seen on our TV screens and in newspapers. The physical devastation is there for all to see.
The emotional impact on lives is one I simply cannot put into words.
There is a long road to recovery ahead – with the help of our donors and our staff, GOAL will be there.
Gabriella Pandini is the GOAL Country Director for Zimbabwe.
You can find out more about GOAL’s emergency response to Cyclone Idai here.
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Well balanced and non judgemental article.. if only everyone could think and act that way…
What we need is a Whole System that works,
It’s time to drain the sespool of leaders and show them with your VOTES , who are the real bosses , they work for us ,NOT the other way around
@Karllye kripton: the politicians don’t decide what drugs get approved, to do so would drive healthcare to a dystopian system to be decided by public opinion rather than expert medical professionals, so I’m unsure how votes would achieve your desired effect
@Karllye kripton: that’ll make a huge difference .. not .. you cant vote out any of the leaders in THE HSE .. they are employees if the state …
@Vocal Outrage: Unfortunately this isn’t true. Look at Orkambi. Deemed to be not cost effective by the NCPE. Recommended not for reimbursement. Simon Harris decides to fund it. Despite this money coming at the expense of various other cost effective treatments. I wish the general public were fully aware of what a self serving decision this was, and how much it has cost the HSE, for a very marginal benefit, when you look at the overall CF population. But it looks good in the press.
@Peter Wheen: my point exactly, when you make populist medical policy decisions like that, against professional advice, then other parts of the service will suffer. I guess I was referring to how it should be
My mum was seen by many consultants in a private hospital in Dublin for pains that eventually had her bed ridden. After 4 months of various tests and different pain killers she took very ill and rushed to hospital. A simple CT scan not done previuosly by any consultant showed she was riddled with cancer and died the next day. My trust in private hospitals was questioned from that day onwards..
I remember my granfather saying he was on 9 pills a day in his late 70s. Now a day most fit 30 year olds are putting 4 tablets into themselves
Something is definitely wrong if half a million people are on anti depressiants. It’s all a scam
@Tom Padraig: Perhaps rather than blaming the medication, you should consider the circumstances that lead to people requiring antidepressants as opposed to labelling it all a scam.
@Philip Kavanagh: He is not wrong. One example would be the number of teens on Meds to treat their “ADHD” because they once told mummy to fork orf after eating a bag of skittles and downing five cans of red bull.
@Philip Kavanagh: As evidenced by the experience of those involved in the Air Corps chemical scandal, many if not most people on ADs do not need them. However they are the current quick “fix” for clinicians and a very lucrative one for industry.
The overprescription of ADs is a scourge & a scandal. The increase in anxiety & depression is being driven by what we eat, what we drink and what we breath.
ADs are one of the current unsustainable answers to an already unsustainable problem, counselling is the other.
Treating depression & anxiety along with so called suicide prevention is a fooking industry at this point.
@Ronan Sexton: He is wrong. Some people need antidepressants for a specific period, others will be on them for life. Like for most illnesses, medication is only one of the range of treatments. To write it all of as a scam is dangerous and stupid.
@Chemical Brothers: Back up your unsubstantiated claim with actual sources that “many if not most people on ADs do not need them”.
@Philip Kavanagh: The numbers on antidepressants in Ireland is simply staggering. To believe that all these people actually have mental health illnesses is simply beyond belief.
We are mass medicating a massive portion of our population out of ignorance.
I suppose the matter of not wasting billions on whats planned to be a multi tier health system for our kids in the supposed “best new hospital in the world (if you are wealthy and can afford expensive health insurance)”, would allow us buy a couple of billions more worth of drugs.
Can I ask if Dr. O’Connor believes, like a recently published Cork based gastroenterologist, that IBS is a psychosomatic illness?
“More than 50 per cent of my outpatients have symptoms caused by psychosomatic conditions, such as irritable bowel syndrome, which cannot be elucidated or cured by the molecular biologists”
@Chemical Brothers: wow, a little off topic, no?
@James Brady: Not really IBS and the like is overwhelming Gastroenterology Depts in all our hospitals. If all Gastroenterologists think IBS is psychosomatic then the problem is not being dealt with properly and is a further drain on the same pot of resources.
It stands to reason that if spending on expensive drugs means less money for other hospital spending then if something else is using up funds like for huge numbers of unnecessary “arse covering” endoscopy that then further eats into the same pool of money.
@Chemical Brothers: It’s not unnecessary. It is necessary to investigate or you can’t say with confidence that pt has IBS as opposed to something more serious. IBS is a diagnosis of exclusion. If gastroenterologist is arranging endoscopy to investigate, they are likely looking to rule out conditions with overlapping presentations such as coeliac, crohns, ulcerative colitis. When all investigations are negative and the symptoms are still of concern, it is not unreasonable to attempt treatments which have evidence of working in these cohorts of patients such as specific diets etc.
@Stephen Chaney: Thanks for reply. Considering the large percentage of those diagnosed with IBS in outpatient clinics would an approach of trying diet first rather than an expensive, invasive, unpleasant endoscopy procedure with attendant risk be a better course of action?
Is the endoscopy first approach being driven more by fear of missing a cancer and being sued for same rather than what may be a simpler approach?
Genuinely just asking, have had cameras both ends with nothing sinister found but have subsequently had success with dietary measures but not necessarily measures that consultants are familiar with.
This is one of the best articles offering a comprehensive and fair analysis on our Health System, I can’t fault it. This should be framed.
Agree with Dr O’Connor – balanced views sustained by experience. Have been treated well in both systems, though public AnE requires patience.
In the UK there are set targets for delivery – something like Cancer surgery within 4 weeks maximum. If we set our public hospitals targets and then offered the patient free private care if not met that would focus minds on efficiencies.
@Pat Redmond: or just pay hospitals (and drs etc) per procedure. The countries with the shortest waiting lists are those with systems based on insurance where hospitals are paid like that.
he makes some valid points, but the chances of Ireland producing a high quality low cost health service are slim. We don’t do low cost for things like that in this country.
Great article and much that needs to be said- just would like to suggest another option- we need to recognise that the price tag on patented medicines bears no relationship to the cost of bringing the drug to market- but is the price unilaterally set by Pharma and is based on the maximum profit it can bring to its shareholders- which for life saving or life enhancing drugs is very high indeed. We need to bring some balance of power to the negotiating table to prevent monopoly abuse- ultimately by replacing the monopoly with an alternative incentive such as grants for R&D.
Off topic.
have your say