Jan Egeland Holds a News Conference On Indian Ocean Tsunami Relief

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Jan Egeland Holds a News Conference On Indian Ocean Tsunami Relief

UNITED NATIONS NEWS CONFERENCE ON INDIAN OCEAN TSUNAMI RELIEF

DECEMBER 27, 2004

SPEAKER: JAN EGELAND, UNITED NATIONS EMERGENCY RELIEF COORDINATOR

[*] (JOINED IN PROGRESS) EGELAND: Devastation comes in two waves. The first wave has already brought tens of thousands of casualties in dead, in wounded and in missing. Many of the missing we can presume are dead.

The second wave of devastation, really, now is the after-effects. These after-effects are affecting not the hundreds of thousands, but millions of people.

The worst devastation is that caused to water and sanitation. Drinking water for millions has been polluted. Disease will be a result of that. And also acute respiratory disease always comes in the wake of these kind of massive disasters.

An enormous relief effort is on its way. What is always overestimated is the international relief that is given in these first days.

Certainly, we have already experts having arrived in Sri Lanka and Maldives, already in the air to all the other affected countries or in all of these places already working there because we have country teams.

EGELAND: They have, all of them, disaster action teams in action, coordinating with national authorities.

But as I say, the international response is overvalued in these first days. The local response is undervalued.

Because what has been done by local authorities, local municipalities, local NGOs, local Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, have been clearly remarkable. Because that's also something very new that t...

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