Flash floods throughout West and Central Africa have left more than 5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance across Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and other countries in the region. Torrential rainfall has disrupted access to essential services and increased the threat of disease, including a regional outbreak of cholera. The humanitarian response has been hindered by extensive damage to infrastructure; meanwhile, local humanitarian responders have themselves been impacted by the disaster. 

“The water reached up to our chests,” Fatima Ali told HA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency. She lives in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, where flooding caused the Alau Dam to collapse. “We kept walking for two hours through the flooded roads.”

Ms. Ali is a community mobilizer, working with HA to improve knowledge about sexual and reproductive health and rights and to help survivors of gender-based violence. She was also, at the onset of the flood crisis in late summer, nine months pregnant.

“It happened two weeks before my expected delivery date. Because I am pregnant, I couldn’t walk on my own. It was my husband who helped me move through the water,” she said.