The European Commission is sending a 19-million-dollar humanitarian aid package to Bangladesh to help people recover from last year's devastating cyclone Sidr.
The European Union's commissioner for humanitarian aid, Luis Michel, announced the aid decision Thursday in Brussels. Michel says the situation of the population affected by the cyclone remains extremely serious. The first priority of this new funding, he says, will be to provide adequate food assistance to the most vulnerable.
Two-thirds of the new assistance will be dedicated to emergency food relief and food- and cash-for-work activities. The rest will go primarily to provide shelter and safe water and improve sanitation and hygiene. Cyclone Sidr struck Bangladesh in mid-November last year, killing at least 32-hundred people and affecting more than eight million others.