On Sunday, April 2, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) sent a multidisciplinary team consisting of a coordinator, a doctor, a nurse, a psychologist, and a logistician to Mocoa, Colombia, to assess the medical needs of people affected by this weekend's landslides.
The teams traveled to different parts of Colombia, where for 15 years MSF has provided primary, mental and sexual and reproductive health care to victims of armed conflict and violence in isolated populations in twenty departments of the country.
MSF will initially be sending medical kits to care for injured victims.
At dawn on Saturday, April 1, heavy rains caused the Mocoa, Mulato, and Sancoyaco rivers to overflow, resulting in landslides in several sectors of Mocoa, the capital of Putumayo, Colombia, in the South of the country. The flooding of these three rivers and streams also led to the destruction of several of the city's neighborhoods, leaving 238 people dead, 203 injured, and 220 missing, with more than 300 families affected.