By Anugrah Kumar
A week after Super Typhoon Haiyan killed 4,460 people and displaced over 1.8 million in the Philippines, American Christian groups working with their local partners are calling for prayers and financial support amid tragic stories of loss and a severe scarcity of food, water and medicine.
While U.S. Christian relief agencies, along with other international organizations and foreign governments, are responding to the devastation, the need “is still so great,” says Indiana-based Church World Service (CWS) in a statement.
“Tragic stories of loss are emerging every day – mothers searching for their children, families torn apart,” CWS adds. “The people of the Philippines and other regions damaged by the storm desperately need our prayers and financial support.”
CWS is working in the central Philippine city of Tacloban, the capital of Leyte province where Haiyan destroyed about 80 percent of structures in its path.
“Thanks to our partnerships on the ground today, help is on the way to many of the more than 200,000 of the most vulnerable survivors that we are targeting with our initial relief work,” CWS says.