• Cities including Muisne in the province of Esmeraldas, and Pedernales and Portoviejo in Manabi, are near the epicenter of the earthquake and have been severely affected. Humanitarian teams have not yet been able to access these locations and the situation is serious.
• Action Against Hunger has deployed materials from Colombia to facilitate access to potable water, and to sanitation and hygiene solutions. A total of ten experts from Spain and Colombia have been mobilized in the past 24 hours.

"On our way to Esmeraldas from Colombia, the road was completely deserted," said Juliana Ruiz, a coordinator for Action Against Hunger based in Pasto, Colombia. "People remain in their homes, still very afraid." 

Ruiz traveled from Colombia to Ecuador yesterday and has already started assessing needs and taking immediate steps to implement the most appropriate response.

"The information we have at the moment is not very reliable," she said. "We fear that the initial figures about this catastrophe will be replaced with higher ones in the coming hours."

We have mobilized three teams of experts in the last 24 hours: logisticians, specialists in water, sanitation, and hygiene, and experts in food security. Their mission is to rapidly assess the most urgent humanitarian needs and to implement activities around water supplies, basic health care needs (e.g. personal hygiene kits and latrines), food security, and psychosocial support.  

We have dispatched materials from Panama and Colombia: hygiene kits, chlorinated water tanks, treatment systems for household water, water pumps, water tanks, and distribution points for safe water.  

Our teams are also preparing the needed equipment to put together so-called "baby tents," which are safe spaces where young children and their mothers can receive psychosocial support to cope with the impacts of the disaster and learn good hygiene practices to prevent the spread of new diseases among children.  

Watch this space, and our social media accounts, for further updates about Action Against Hunger's response in Ecuador.  

For U.S. media requests, please contact: Action Against Hunger USA
Elizabeth Wright: 917.803.1139, ewright@actionagainsthunger.org