Note: Single-source report; awaiting corroboration.
Flooding in Nepal triggered by a glacier collapse on the Nepal-China border has caused extensive damage to water systems, sanitation facilities, and schools, affecting thousands of children. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children are now without access to safe water, increasing the risk of waterborne and infectious diseases.
The disaster has also damaged critical infrastructure, including roads, bridges, and telecommunications, making aid delivery to affected communities more difficult. At least 19 schools have been damaged, with eight destroyed and eight partially destroyed, leaving over 10,000 school-age children in urgent need of psychosocial support and safe learning spaces.
Displaced families are living in crowded conditions with host communities or at holding centres, making safe hygiene practices challenging. The World Health Organization notes that such flooding, displacement, and overcrowding can elevate the risk of communicable diseases like dengue and scrub typhus.
UNICEF has responded by dispatching water, sanitation, and hygiene supplies for around 19,000 people in the hardest-hit districts of Rasuwa and Nuwakot. These supplies include hygiene kits, collapsible jerrycans, buckets, water treatment solutions, and tarpaulin sheets. UNICEF staff are working with authorities and partners on disease surveillance, hygiene promotion, and outbreak prevention.
Children such as 14-year-old Swostik Paudel from Nuwakot have had their daily lives disrupted. He now lives in a shelter with his family, trying to maintain some normalcy by playing with a punctured football brought by other children.
UNICEF plans to expand emergency water supply efforts, household water treatment, water-quality monitoring, sanitation, handwashing facilities, and access to essential hygiene items as conditions allow.