LEILA FADEL, HOST:
A super typhoon is cutting across the Philippines with a band of rain a thousand miles wide. This is just a week after another powerful storm battered the country and killed at least 200 people. A million people have been ordered to evacuate because of the new typhoon. Regis Chapman is the country director of the World Food Programme in the Philippines, and he joins me now from Manila. Good morning.
REGIS CHAPMAN: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
FADEL: Thank you for being here. Given a storm has already battered the country, how bad are the needs right now as this typhoon approaches?
CHAPMAN: Right. So the typhoon is actually just now sort of leaving the Philippines. So last night, or about 24 hours ago, it was impacting the country,
FADEL: OK.
CHAPMAN: It passed over land overnight. So it's on its way out.
FADEL: Out.
CHAPMAN: And at this stage, really, the - what's happening is, you know, assessing some of the damages. And so, as you mentioned, this is on top of the other one just a week before.
FADEL: So what are the needs between the storm last week and the typhoon?
CHAPMAN: Yeah. So, I mean, the needs, at least for the area that was just hit, like usual, it's things like food, water and shelter. As the situation evolves, that will transition to more sort of livelihood support, so how do you get people who've lost everything back up and running effectively and, you know, earning money again, so people who have lost fishing boats and those sort of things. But what's really interesting with the super typhoon that just passed, the World Food Programme had moved in place a lot of things before the storm hit.
FADEL: OK.
CHAPMAN: And that includes prepositioning government food packs. But what's been really quite an interesting one with this response is we were also able to make transfers to around 40,000 households to provide them with the cash they need to be able to take preparedness measures. And so, you know, a lot of this case is what was done beforehand.
FADEL: You know, people in the Philippines have now endured two typhoons this month, two powerful earthquakes in October. You've described the Philippines as one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. Is there a remedy?
CHAPMAN: Tough question. I mean, you know, there's - obviously, you know, we're seeing increasing severity and frequency of storms. It is the most disaster-prone country in the world. I think the solution is strengthening resilience, and that resilience needs to be of government systems to be able to scale up and respond and to support preparedness, but also vulnerable households to, you know, have more resilience at their level, as well. That said, you know, there are a lot of challenges in the geography of the Philippines. And it's, you know, simply within that typhoon belt, and we can expect that these will continue to happen. The super typhoon, Fung-wong, that just passed, it's the 21st storm of this year in the Philippines. So again, just to sort of showcase...
FADEL: Wow.
CHAPMAN: ...How frequently it does get hit.
FADEL: And is that part of the reason the World Food Programme is now in this anticipating-disaster mode?
CHAPMAN: It is. It is. And I think, again, what we know over time is that by assisting early and even beforehand, we actually save money on traditional humanitarian responses, whereas, otherwise, we'd be scaling up now after the event and trying to figure out the needs by targeting the most vulnerable. Before, we've been able to get assistance out and help them to adjust to the storm.
FADEL: Regis Chapman is the country director of the World Food Programme. We spoke to him in Manila. Thank you so much.
CHAPMAN: Thank you.
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