Gates Foundation provides $500k for cyclone survivors

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has announced a $500,000 (£244,900) funding injection towards attempts to help families stricken by Cyclone Sidr.

Their donation, made to charity Save The Children, aims to provide Bangladeshi families with access to food and clean drinking water to prevent the spread of disease.

According to the charity, in the aftermath of the cyclone it has helped 130,000 families with their basic survival needs, but more help is now needed to ensure families are kept fed and safe from disease.

Charles MacCormack, president and chief executive of Save The Children, said: "This new grant will help us keep thousands of additional children and their families alive and healthy who otherwise might not get our assistance."

"Besides providing families immediate life-saving support, the grant will also help us assist families in the months ahead, especially those who lost much of their rice crop this year as a result of the storm," he added.

Last week the United Nation's children's fund, UNICEF, warned that up to 2.5 million Bangladeshi children were affected by November's cyclone, and many faced disease and death if humanitarian aid did not reach them on time.

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