Summary The government on Tuesday put the death toll at 48
BLANTYRE (AFP) - Malawian authorities warned Friday that more heavy rain was expected as floods ravaged the southern African country, leaving dozens dead and missing and thousands displaced.
"What the country has witnessed is only the beginning of the onset of rains," Paul Chiunguzeni, principal secretary for Disaster Management Affairs, said in a statement.
"The government is urging people living in flood-prone districts to urgently relocate to upland areas to avoid losing more lives."
The floods, which have wreaked havoc on half the country s 28 districts, have left an estimated 100,000 people homeless.
The government on Tuesday put the death toll at 48, but Chiunguzeni would not provide an updated figure, saying teams had been sent to "source and verify information" on the number of people dead and missing.
He said about 1,180 flood victims stranded on patches of high ground in the flood-prone south have been evacuated since rescue missions with military helicopters and boats were launched Thursday.
The country s sole electricity provider Escom lost 35 percent of its power after shutting down two of its five power stations located on the Shire River.
This was after the floods left a "high volume of trash, silt and huge logs which have choked the water entry points of the machines," causing massive power outages across Malawi, according to Escom CEO John Kandulu.
In a statement Friday, African Union chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said the organisation would give the "highest priority to providing modest humanitarian assistance" to Malawi "as soon as possible".
The World Food Programme said it would airlift stocks to flooded areas.
"Ready-to-eat food will be prioritised for the most vulnerable people, particularly children, who have been displaced from their homes and have no access to food or cooking facilities," the WFP said in a statement Friday.
Five major roads in the south have been closed after bridges were washed away, including some on the road to the prime tourist destination of Mangochi on the shores of Lake Malawi.
This made an access to the hardest-hit areas "extremely difficult", the WFP said.
Hein Zeelie of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the central and northern parts of the country were the agency s next concern "as we are expecting heavy rains for those areas for the next week".
"A lot of preparation activities have been taking place for the rainy season, but no matter how well prepared one could have been, the extreme amount of rainfall would have led to this situation."
Risk of cholera, typhoid
The government has also warned of the impact the floods will have on health services, fearing the spread of water-borne diseases.
"The health care system will be disrupted as people will not get services and some might have lost their drugs including anti-retrovirals (to fight HIV). Children will not be vaccinated," said Malawi s health ministry spokesman Henry Chimbali.
"Sanitation will be compromised now with waterborne diseases such as cholera, dysentery and typhoid likely to occur."
President Peter Mutharika has called the floods a "national tragedy that urgently needs both local and international response".
Malawi shares a river system with neighbouring Mozambique, where some 52,000 people have been affected by floods, a source from that country s National Disasters Management Institute told AFP.
Local reports have reported 24 deaths, but Mozambican authorities have yet to confirm the figure.
Mozambique s weather service expects heavy rain in the south of the country until early Saturday, as the pressure eases in the central and northern areas.
