World Vision USA appeals for $2.1m to keep up Bangladesh response

World Vision USA is appealing for a fresh $2.1 million injection to sustain its humanitarian response to the widespread devastation in Bangladesh caused by Cyclone Sidr.

The aid package will include $1.5m worth of tin sheeting for 9,375 families - or 50,000 - who have lost their homes. A further $640,000 will ensure that there are enough emergency food and relief items to meet the needs of some 100,000 people.

"The scale of the devastation is enormous. It is very hard to get to some areas due to fallen trees. There is need wherever we look," said Vince Edwards, World Vision's national director in Bangladesh.

Edwards has been working with the agency's relief teams in some of the worst hit communities. "We need to get bundles of tin sheeting to these families living out in the open," said Edwards.

"We are going to focus our efforts on the worst affected: people who have completely lost their homes, women-headed households, the poorest of the poor and those families who have children with disabilities."

Rika Halder, 11, and her family are homeless after the cyclone's high winds threw their fragile family home, made of only bamboo and mud, into a nearby marshland.

"Our house was taken away like a toy," Halder told a World Vision aid worker. "We found it ... but without a roof or wall. My father and mother started screaming, as we were, too. What we need most is food and a place to live. It is hard to live under open sky."

World Vision emergency food packs containing two kilogrammes of rice and one kilo of sugar or molasses have already been delivered to 2,400 families.

The agency is also readying 7-day emergency relief packs that include water, rice, potatoes, sugar, oil, salt, blankets, mattresses, clothing, oral re-hydration salts and candles for distribution to some 20,000 families, or 100,000 individuals.

The response is being carried through by more than 800 World Vision staff and volunteers, with some providing first aid to those injured by flying debris and collapsing homes.

To support World Vision's Bangladesh response www.worldvision.org