Along with the grave suffering that COVID-19 is causing around the world, particularly in south-east Asia, our partners are supporting people in situations of conflict and violence in Myanmar and Ethiopia. Please continue to pray for all of our partners as they stand alongside people facing hardship at this time.
On 1 February 2021 – the day a new parliament was about to be installed in Myanmar – the military seized power and announced a state of emergency for one year. Those behind the coup claim national elections in November 2020 were flawed. On 7 February, demonstrations took place across the country. Curfews were introduced and maintained with force, with violent crackdowns on protesters. Since then, hundreds of people are reported to have been killed and more than 4,000 arrested. Living costs in Myanmar have rocketed and there are food shortages in the larger cities.
Many states have announced curfews and lockdowns. Job loss, food insecurity and economic hardship are once again a looming reality for millions of informal workers and daily wage earners. With no savings to bank upon, the future looks bleak for most of them.
In early November 2020, the people of the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia found themselves caught up in a conflict between federal and regional government forces. More than two million people have had to leave their homes due to the fighting, many seeking safety in other parts of the region, or fleeing to neighbouring Sudan. Even before the conflict broke out, nearly one million people in this poor region of Ethiopia were reliant on aid. Now, the United Nations is warning of an increasingly dire humanitarian situation, and highlighting the need for vital assistance like food, clean water and medical care.
Please pray for our partners, the Ethiopian Kale Heywet Church Development Commission and Tearfund Ethiopia, as they lead two emergency responses (with Tearfund’s support) that will provide food and shelter for thousands of internally displaced people over the next couple of months. They will be supporting families that are sheltering in schools in the Tigray capital Mekele, and others who have fled across Tigray’s eastern border into the neighbouring state of Afar where they are living with local families.
India is in the grip of a COVID crisis, with deaths exceeding 4,000 per day throughout much of May, and many hospitals being overwhelmed. According to World Health Organisation data published on 11 May, India continues to account for 95 per cent of cases and 93 per cent of deaths in the south-east Asia region, as well as 50 per cent of global cases and 30 per cent of global deaths. Actual numbers are much higher as many cases are not reported, particularly in rural areas.*
Many states have announced curfews and lockdowns. Job loss, food insecurity and economic hardship are once again a looming reality for millions of informal workers and daily wage earners. With no savings to bank upon, the future looks bleak for most of them.
Pray for staff as they respond to COVID. Hospital staff in particular are feeling overwhelmed by the scope of the need and the amount of grief they are witnessing daily.
Pray for community-based staff who are supporting families in urgent need of food relief due to having lost loved ones and/or employment, and also providing home-based care for severe COVID cases to help take pressure off of hospitals. Tearfund is supporting this work.
Support to recover from COVID ordeal
With your support, Tearfund’s partner Emmanuel Hospital Association (EHA) is providing much-needed health care to people affected by the COVID crisis in India.
Dilip, a 61-year-old man from Agra, works as a labourer on daily wages. He lives with his two sons, both of whom lost their jobs due to the pandemic. Dilip isn’t able to work either, because of the COVID lockdown. When Dilip was infected with COVID-19, his sons took care of him as best they could, but his health was worsening by the day.
When the EHA team heard about Dilip’s situation, they supported his sons to help them understand their father’s condition and interpret the reports they were receiving about his health. As the situation became more critical, the EHA team helped Dilip and his sons find the best hospital for Dilip’s condition.
Dilip was discharged once his condition stabilised, and he is now under home care. The EHA team is supporting Dilip with good nutritional information to help his body recover fully from the ordeal of COVID-19.
Dilip and his sons are very grateful to God for this help from EHA.
Pray for Saahasee staff as they provide relief to some of the most needy people in the densely populated poor communities in which they work. Pray for emotional strength as they provide comfort and support to grieving people.
EFICOR staff report that many migrants, daily wage workers and rural poor are bearing the brunt of the COVID-19 crisis in their country, and finding it difficult to cope without a job or money. Lockdowns, curfews and shutting down of factories have led to job losses for many poor and middle-class families. These communities will soon face food insecurity in addition to being at risk of contracting the virus. EFICOR has identified more than 20,000 households from across our project locations in 14 states who require immediate support.
Even as several of its own staff and their families face COVID-19, EFICOR is partnering with various organisations in India and from around the world to support daily wage labourers, migrants, people living with HIV and AIDS, and people living with disabilities. Staff are working closely with community-based organisations to access economic packages that the government has announced during this health emergency period. They aim to equip these groups to be change agents in their own community so that the community may survive this phase with health, dignity and self-respect.
Churches in Delhi have come together under the banner of “The Delhi Movement” to support various needs of the grieving communities within Delhi. EFICOR is working with this movement to reach out to many communities of migrants and daily wage labourers.
Praise God for:
Pray for:
‘I am very grateful for this timely support’
Mrs Godi is from a small village in Jharkhand, a state in eastern India. She and her husband are marginal farmers who depend on seasonal agriculture for their livelihood. They also receive support from their son, who migrated to Tamil Nadu, in the south of the country, for work.
The pandemic and ensuing lockdown have hit them hard, including hindering their ability to earn an income from farming.
EFICOR learned of their plight and offered them cash support to assist at a very difficult time.
“We were able to buy groceries like oil, vegetables and spices which will last for three weeks. We were even able to buy some chicken. I am very grateful for this timely support,” Mrs Godi said.
There are growing fears about the situation in Nepal, where a surge in COVID-19 cases, around 8000 per day, driven partly by the return of migrant workers from neighbouring India - has pushed the country’s health system to its limits.
Centre for Mental Health and Counselling – Nepal is focusing on addressing the emotional distress caused by the COVID crisis, particularly for people with existing mental health conditions, but also for those stuck in quarantine, and frontline health workers.
Pray for staff as they provide tele-counselling and mental health services to people with mental health conditions and others in the community, trauma counselling for people who have lost family members and close relatives, psychological first aid for vulnerable people and support for front-line health workers.
Welfare Association for Children Tikapur (WACT) is supporting the Nepal local government health response in two municipalities in Nepal (Joshipur and Lamki-Chuha), helping to resource local health units in communities there. WACT has longstanding relationships in these areas through Self-Help Group work that Tearfund has been supporting. WACT is providing supplies including PPE sets, face shields / surgical masks, sanitiser, digital thermometers, antigen test kits and basic medicines.
Pray for WACT staff as they help communities to access basic healthcare services, and in doing so relieve pressure on district and tertiary referral medical facilities.
Share and Care director Ramesh and his family contracted COVID-19, and Ramesh had to spend more than a week in hospital. Praise the Lord that they are all recovering from their illness.
A cyclone recently hit the southern part of Bangladesh, causing strong winds and tidal surges in Mongla municipality and surrounds, and damage to homes, livelihoods (like vegetable crops), and loss of electricity. More than one million people have had to be evacuated in Bangladesh and neighbouring India.
Tearfund has provided additional funding to our partner, Bangladesh Association for Sustainable Development (BASD), to help communities affected by the cyclone and its aftermath. BASD has been working in Mongla for around 15 years, helping to form, strengthen and consolidate women’s Self-Help Groups. Bangladesh is currently under lockdown, and day labourers, fishermen, marginal farmers, and port workers have been left without their daily income. The lockdown is also compounding the challenges of supporting communities in the wake of the cyclone. This week two key community leaders died of COVID, causing grief and fear within those communities.
This special support will help people in Mongla with essentials like rice, potato, pulses, onions and cooking oil, and extra items including biscuits, eggs and milk for children. Many will have lost their food stores and can’t access markets, due to cyclone damage and COVID lockdowns. BASD will also help people access clean water, and masks, detergent and soap to protect them from COVID-19.
Mozambique has had COVID lockdowns, although the impact of the virus is not as big there as in Asia. Lockdown has meant that kids have been out of school and businesses closed for long periods. On top of that, there were two cyclones in 2020-21, and the impact of these is still significant for people. Pray for Tearfund’s partner Oasis Mozambique as it seeks to adapt to changing contexts and challenges, and for communities where people spend so much time recovering from things that it can be really hard to move forward.
Please pray for staff of our partner Nzeve Zimbabwe as they work with communities to include people with disabilities in social and economic opportunities. This is challenging anywhere, but Zimbabwe has had a number of short COVID lockdowns, as well as an ongoing economic meltdown resulting in shortages of food and other essential items, hunger, unemployment and lack of health care for large numbers of people in the country. People with disabilities often suffer the most at times like this.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has identified more than 18 million people in Afghanistan in humanitarian need in 2021 as a result of COVID-19, ongoing conflict and natural disasters. The health and socioeconomic impacts of the pandemic have seen the number of people in need almost double in the past year alone. Afghanistan now has the second highest number of people in emergency food insecurity in the world, and nearly one in two children under the age of five will face acute malnutrition in 2021.
* https://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/global-covid-death-toll-3-times-higher-than-the-usual-stats-suggest-and-much-more-skewed-towards-poor-countries/
