More than a month after Hurricane Melissa slammed the Caribbean, devastated communities still require assistance, the regional director for the World Food Programme (WFP) told journalists at UN Headquarters on Thursday.
"We cannot forget Haiti," said Lola Castro, speaking from the capital, Port-au-Prince, while also appealing for Jamaica, Cuba and the Dominican Republic.
More than 80 people were killed and roughly six million were affected by the category 5 hurricane - among the most intense in the Atlantic on record.
The senior humanitarian placed particular emphasis on Haiti, which is already grappling with challenges including gang violence, mostly in the capital, and food insecurity.
Roughly 5.7 million people - over half the population - are going hungry and 1.4 million nationwide are displaced.
Fleeing through rivers of mud
Hurricane Melissa dumped heavy rains on southern Haiti, impacting 1.2 million people.
Ms. Castro was fresh from the town of Petit-Goâve, where the river burst its banks and "people had to escape from their houses in the middle of the night through rivers of mud." Twenty-five residents died.
She met "women and men in total distress" who are trying to rebuild their lives after losing their loved ones, homes, livelihoods, crops and cattle.
WFP , alongside other UN agencies, NGOs and the government, were on the ground "from day one" providing food and then cash transfers, which allow people to make their own purchasing decisions.
Women told her that they will use the cash transfers to buy food, soap and other immediate needs.
"We also talked with a group of youth that are organized, trying to help these communities to restart their lives," she continued.
"And what they ask is, 'Please don't forget us. Don't forget us, because a month-and-a half (ago) we were in all the news, but now we need continued support.'"
Recovery and rehabilitation
The hurricane also caused catastrophic damage in western Jamaica and eastern Cuba, and WFP has reached more than 725,000 people across the four countries.
"We are trying now to really work on recovery and rehabilitation through a number of tools," Ms. Castro said, such as school feeding programmes and supporting government efforts to boost social protection through registering everyone who has been affected by the disaster.
"But what is very clear in Haiti and in the whole region is that we need to invest much more, as we have done this time, on anticipatory action."
Advance preparation critical
WFP undertook a lot of work around emergency preparedness before the hurricane hit.
These measures included sending messages advising Haitians of the impending storm, reaching some 3.5 million nationwide, and distributing advance cash transfers to more than 50,000 people. Teams in Cuba also moved food aid from the east of the island to the west.
"But we need to do much more of that," she said. "We really need also to ensure that our simulations and preparedness mechanisms are ready."
Building community resilience
Ms. Castro highlighted examples such as microinsurance payments, which enable smallholder farmers in Haiti - who provide food used in WFP's "homegrown" school meals programmes - to keep on producing.
"These are new mechanisms and tools that we need to do much more in the region, in the Caribbean, because we know every year there will be hurricanes or earthquakes, like we saw last year in Cuba," she said.
"We really need to work harder to build the resilience of these populations that are permanently affected so that food insecurity doesn't become a trend but is reduced, with the communities working for themselves and building their own resilience."
WFP is seeking $83 million to reach 1.3 million people across the Caribbean affected by Hurricane Melissa. and roughly half the funding has been received.
