New York, August 12: The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for urgent action to minimize disaster damage in Asia, a continent which is vulnerable to natural disasters.
“We know that prevention is better than the cure. Yet too often, there is a tendency to defer action until after disasters occur,” Ban said at the opening of a new UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction office in Incheon, South Korea.
Last year, nearly 140,000 people died in Burma’s devastating Cyclone Nargis, while over five million homes collapsed in the Sichuan earthquake in China.
In his speech Ban underscored the importance of building risk reduction capacities as well as raising public awareness, according to a copy of his speech made available at the UN headquarters in New York.
–PTI