Food Shortage

An advocate, Biara Touakin, who is based in Fiji, said a ship typically visits each month, but the last one, on January the 6th, only contained enough food for about two weeks.

The more than 300 people living on Banaba depend almost entirely on food sent from Tarawa.

The island was decimated by phosphate mining in the first half of the 20th century, and it no longer has fruit bearing trees that could supplement the people's fishing.

Mr Touakin also said the desalination plant installed late last year continues to produce brackish water.

Ursula Rakova heads Tulele Peisa, which is helping people from the Carteret Islands, where there have been problems for years with sea level rise, to settle on the Bougainville mainland.

She said severe flooding in January, with king tides, made things much worse, not only in the Carterets but also nearby Tasman or Nukumanu Islands.

Ms Rakova is calling on the autonomous government to declare a state of emergency.

World Vision's Dominica Leonard was in Tanna Island last month.

She says Tanna is facing a bleak time.

Leonard says initially crops were destroyed by the cyclone while subsequent plantings have been stymied by a lack of water and rock hard ground caused by the drought.