There are Roughly 2,000,000 Orphaned and Abandoned Children in the Philippines – Why?
For the next couple of weeks we will be exploring the main reasons there are so many orphans in the Philippines. The number is so huge (and has been for a long time), that it is appropriate to label this an absolute crisis! There really are four factors that contribute to the large number of orphans and in this post, we will be looking at the one we have no control over – natural disasters.
The Philippines has been named the most exposed country in the world to natural disasters.
The Philippines is located along the ‘Ring of Fire’ or typhoon belt which is a large Pacific Ocean region where many of earth’s volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur. Because of this, the country has suffered tremendously from powerful and deadly typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other natural disasters.
Approximately 80 typhoons develop every year above tropical waters, of which 19 enter the Philippines and about six to nine make landfall. The most recent being Typhoon Ompong which was the strongest to hit the Philippines since 2010.
This is staggering!!
The Philippines has been named as the most exposed country to natural disasters in the world! But the Philippines is also 2nd among the top 10 countries in terms of the number of people affected by extreme weather events and 10th for the highest death toll, the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) said in its analysis of 281 events for 2018.
Such drastic storms destroy homes, villages, and families. Often the survivors are the children, minus their parents. Natural disasters routinely give birth to orphans.
