Cyclone Freddy: plus d’un demi-million de personnes touchées au Malawi

The disaster was declared in the country, the police and the army are deployed. President Lazarus Chakwera called for international aid.

the world with AFP

Cyclone Freddy, which left more than four hundred dead in southern Africa, touched more than half a million people in Malawi. The country, among the poorest in the world, is now faced with a risk of humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations, which give the alert on Friday, March 17. In six days, the equivalent of six months of rain fell on the south of the country, causing floods and landslides.

Freddy “reduced in a low pressure zone and completely dissipated on March 15,” said the local UN humanitarian affairs coordination office, in a situation. “More than 500,000 people have been affected since March 12,” according to the office, and more than 183,000 people – out of a population of almost 20 million – are homeless.

some three hundred emergency accommodation have been opened, but destruction is still limiting access to humanitarian teams and making aid difficult, said the World Food Program (PAM) in a press release.

Phalombre victims, in the south of Malawi, Friday March 17, 2023. Thoko Chikondi/

280,000 children need humanitarian aid urgently 2>

Cyclone Freddy, with exceptional longevity, left 326 dead in Malawi. He also killed 86 people in Mozambique, according to a latest assessment on Friday, and seventeen in Madagascar. Trained in early February off the coast of Australia, the cyclone, which has made an unprecedented crossing more than 8,000 kilometers from east to west in the Indian Ocean, is on the way to being classified as the longest ever recorded.

In Malawi, more than 280,000 children need humanitarian aid urgently, alerted a spokesperson for UNICEF, Fungma Fudong. “There is a risk that the current cholera epidemic gets bigger, children being the most vulnerable to this crisis,” she added.