Two Ontario paramedics will be heading to Brazil to help people in Santa Catarina state cope with a terrible flooding disaster.

"The equipment behind me is going to be able to get 70,000 people clean drinking water every single day," Toronto paramedic Raul Singh of GlobalMedic told reporters in Etobicoke on Saturday.

"The consignment goes out today. Our team should be down there in the next couple days, and by the end of the week, 70,000 people should have clean drinking water."

Singh will be travelling down with a colleague from London to the region in southern Brazil that has been devastated by 60 days of rainfall.

GlobalMedic lists the toll as follows:

  • 99 deaths
  • 55,000 displaced

Other media reports say that the death toll has climbed to 109, displaced almost 79,000 and affected 1.5 million. Many communities have been left isolated by landslides and flooding.

Fresh rainfall fell Saturday in the state, threaten to add to the roughly 4,000 landslides that have hit the state, which is considered the heartland of German and Italian immigration to Brazil.

More rain might fall in the coming days.

GlobalMedic, an operational program of the David McAntony Gibson Foundation (DMGF) intended in part to provide disaster relief in the developing world, said Brazil's government has accepted the offer of assistance. 

Wes Normington, a DMGF spokesperson, told ctvtoronto.ca that "we will possibly look at deploying other members of the team" in the coming days.

In the past year, GlobalMedic said it has sent teams to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Peru, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Burma and China.