‘I didn’t think we’d survive typhoon’

On a crowded and humid ward in the Vicente Sotto Memorial Hospital in the Philippines, in the city of Cebu, amid single beds packed with families, lies a young boy, his arm heavily bandaged.

Mal Aron Antivo, aged 11, describes how his family fled from their lightly constructed wooden home in Tacloban, the epicentre of where the storm struck on the night of Nov 8.

“We hid in the van for shelter when the typhoon hit. But a tree flew into it,” says the youngster pointing at his bandaged right arm, where doctors have carried out a skin graft.