133 die in rain battered Philippines

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BY Unknown Saturday, December 23, 2017 0

133 die in rain battered Philippines

133 die in rain battered Philippines

The death toll from a tropical storm in the southern Philippines climbed swiftly to 133 on Saturday, as rescuers pulled dozens of bodies from a swollen river.

Helping hands for people trying to escape rain battered Philippines

Although the police confirmed the death toll, Romina Marasigan, spokesman of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), said that she had got unconfirmed reports of 75 people dead and 58 missing
Since Friday, tropical Storm Tembin has lashed the nation’s second-largest island of Mindanao since Friday, triggering flash floods and mudslides.
The Philippines is pummelled by 20 major storms each year on average, many of them deadly. But Mindanao, home to 20 million people, is rarely hit by these cyclones.
Rescuers retrieved 36 bodies from the Salog River in Mindanao on Saturday, as officials reported more fatalities in the impoverished Zamboanga peninsula.
The bodies were swept downriver from a flooded town upstream called Salvador, Rando Salvacion, the Sapad town police chief, told AFP. Authorities in Salvador said they had retrieved 17 other bodies upstream.
“These reports were received from regional offices, these are consolidated reports but these are subject to validation and verification by the national NDRRMC,” Marasigan said, adding that the dead and missing are mostly from Lanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur and Zamboanga, largely due to landslides and flashfloods.
In the two provinces of Lanao, at least 22 bodies have been pulled out while over 40 are still missing as landslides buried houses along a national road, said Mujiv Hataman, governor for the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao.
In the town of Salvador, Lanao del Norte province, disaster officials said they were still verifying reports that about 20 people have been swept away as floodwaters swamped many communities as Tembin dumped torrential rains in the region.
The death toll is expected to rise as more data trickle in from the affected villages and towns from storm-affected provinces.
The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration said Tembin came ashore in the early hours of Friday morning in the Mindanao town of Cateel, packing winds of up to 125 kilometres per hour.
The storm barrelled to the west with its 400-km wide rain band drenching most of the country’s second largest island.
In the western peninsula of Zamboanga del Norte, authorities said they are still checking on reports that 30 people drowned due to storm surges in the coastal town of Sibuco.
Elsewhere, three fishermen have been reported missing off the coast of San Isidro town in Davao Oriental province, but police on Saturday said the fishermen have returned safely to shore.
Floodwaters have displaced over 50, 000 people in at least three provinces, said Leoncio Cirunay, regional head of the office of civil defence (OCD).
Storm-induced floods and landslides also killed two other people in two other Mindanao regions, officials said.
At least 21 flights have been cancelled at the Manila International Airport, mostly domestic trips to the affected regions.
Port authorities said over 6,000 passengers were stranded in various ports across the archipelago nation. The state weather bureau said Tembin, which re-intensified into a tropical storm after weakening into a tropical depression while traversing the southern Philippines, is expected to be out of the country by Christmas Day.
The storm was last spotted on mid-Saturday 245 km west-northwest of Zamboanga City with winds of up to 80 kph near the center and gusts of up to 90 kph.
The weather disturbance was moving west at 20 kph.
At least 20 typhoons and storms batter the Philippines every year. Tembin is the 22nd to enter the country this year.
Tembin came a few days after powerful storm Kai-Tak battered most of the central Philippines and parts of the Philippine main Luzon Island on Saturday, killing at least 41.

Three dead, 77,000 flee as storm pounds Philippines

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BY Unknown Saturday, December 16, 2017 0

Three dead, 77,000 flee as storm pounds Philippines

Three dead, 77,000 flee as storm pounds Philippines

At least three people were killed and tens of thousands were driven from their homes by floods as Tropical Storm Kai-Tak pounded the eastern Philippines on Saturday, cutting off power and triggering landslides, officials said.
Kai-Tak, packing gusts of up to 110 kilometres (62 miles) an hour, hit the country’s third-largest island Samar in the afternoon and tore through a region devastated by Super Typhoon Haiyan four years ago, the state weather service said.
Local officials reported three deaths on neighbouring Leyte island — a two-year-old boy who drowned in the town of Mahaplag, a woman buried by a landslide and another person who fell into a flooded manhole in Ormoc city.
Samar and Leyte, with a combined population of about 4.5 million, had borne the brunt of Haiyan in 2013, which left more than 7,350 people dead or missing.
Bus driver Felix Villaseran, his wife and four children hunkered down in their two-storey house in the Leyte city of Tacloban along with 11 relatives whose homes were flooded from incessant rain.
“We have yet to shake off our phobia. I hope to God we don’t have a repeat of that,” Villaseran, who lost 39 cousins in the Haiyan onslaught, told AFP by telephone.
“My missus stockpiled on groceries before the storm hit, but since we also have to feed these three other families we’re now running low on food,” he added.
– 77,000 evacuated –
Military trucks drove through rising floodwaters on Samar and Leyte to rescue trapped residents, with more than 77,000 people now in evacuation centres, local officials said.
Strong winds toppled trees and power pylons, knocking out power throughout the region while floods, small landslides and rock falls blocked roads and buried some homes, local officials and witnesses said.
Farmland in the mainly rural region was also under water, while seven people were injured by landslides and flying objects, the regional civil defence office said in a report.
A spokeswoman for the national government’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council told AFP it was trying to confirm reports of two other deaths from landslides and floods on the islands of Biliran and Dinagat.
“It was like a flashback again for residents of Tacloban city,” its vice mayor Sambo Yaokasin told Manila television station ABS-CBN by telephone, referring to the Haiyan disaster.
The station broadcast images of flooded streets and corrugated iron roofing sheets flying off homes.
“Nearly half the villages here are flooded,” Marcelo Picardal, vice governor of Eastern Samar province told ABS-CBN in a telephone interview.
Three other people were missing in Ormoc after being swept away by floods on Saturday, city mayor Richard Gomez told CNN Philippines television in an interview.
“We need a lot of water and a lot of blankets,” Gomez added, citing widespread flooding that may have contaminated the tap water system of the city of 200,000 people.
The state weather service said more heavy rain was expected in the eastern Philippines in the coming hours with Kai-Tak forecast to slice across the rest of the central Philippines over the weekend.
Ferry services on the storm’s path were suspended due to rough seas, the civil defence office in the area said.
About 20 typhoons or weaker storms either make landfall in the Philippines or reach its waters each year, bringing annual misery and death and consigning millions of survivors to perennial poverty.

Philippines 'prepared for worst' in dengue vaccine concerns

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BY Unknown Saturday, December 02, 2017 0

Philippines 'prepared for worst' in dengue vaccine concerns

Philippines 'prepared for worst' in dengue vaccine concerns

This file photo taken on April 4, 2016 shows a nurse showing vials of the anti-dengue vaccine Dengvaxia, developed by French medical giant Sanofi, during a vaccination program at an elementary school in suburban Manila. The Philippines said on December 1, 2017 it had suspended use of the landmark vaccine for the potentially deadly dengue virus after its manufacturer warned it could worsen the disease in some cases. The Philippines has vaccinated more than 700,000 children with the drug since 2016 when it became the first country to start using it on a mass scale.NOEL CELIS / AFP

The Philippines is prepared for a "worst-case scenario" following warnings that an anti-dengue vaccine administered to thousands of children may worsen the disease in some cases, a health official said Saturday.

Department of Health spokesman Eric Tayag said the country had already taken precautions against potential mishaps when it became the first country to use the landmark vaccine in 2016.
The developer of the world's first vaccine for the potentially deadly virus, French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi, revealed earlier this week that it could trigger more severe symptoms in people who had not been previously infected with dengue.
More than 733,000 children have already received Dengvaxia, raising fears that many could develop the harsher form of the disease.
"The Department of Health is prepared for a worst-case scenario," Tayag told ABS-CBN television, a day after the agency announced it was suspending its mass vaccination programme.
Tayag said the government had been careful to only implement the scheme in areas where dengue was already widespread and had only given it to children aged nine or older.
"They are being followed up for adverse effects following immunisation," he said.
He added that the department, which had previously said there were no reported cases of worsened infection among those who received the vaccine, was also checking hospital records for severe cases of dengue.
Sanofi had said such acute dengue cases would not become apparent till about five years after vaccination, Tayag added.
The developer initially said its Dengvaxia vaccine was "critical" in the fight against dengue, the world's most common mosquito-borne virus.
It said Wednesday that a new study has confirmed Dengvaxia's benefits for "those who had prior infection" with the potentially-lethal disease.
"For those not previously infected by dengue virus, however, the analysis found that in the longer term, more cases of severe disease could occur following vaccination upon a subsequent dengue infection," Sanofi said.
More than 1,000 people in the Philippines died from dengue last year, out of more than 211,000 suspected cases, according to the government.