An aid official in Burma says the death toll from Cyclone Nargis may
be 80,000 or more.
An aid official in Burma says the death toll from Cyclone Nargis may
be 80,000 or more.
Kyi Minn is health adviser for World Vision in Burma and he says that
on top of the 22,000 the military regime has admitted have died, there
are another 60,000 missing - presumed dead.
ABC correspondent Peter Lloyd re****ts there are also indications that
the massive aid effort is being hampered by a lack of organisation and
infrastructure in Burma to distribute the urgently needed supplies.
The storm happened at the weekend, but the military junta's slowness
to let international aid agencies in has meant that many devastated
areas have still seen no help.
Agencies are still battling to get all the visas and permits they need
to do their work in flooded and cyclone-ravaged towns and villages.
More details are emerging from Burma about the scale of death and
destruction caused by cyclone Nargis.
Kyi Minn says water is in short supply and power to many communities
is still cut.
"We don't have direct communication with them because there is no
phone lines and trans****tation is very limited because of the roads
are still blocked and some areas are flooded and you cannot go, so we
have to rely on the information that's brought by the eye witnesses
there," Mr Minn said.
"So they were saying that the areas there is quite serious. They found
a lot of dead bodies there and the sanitation is quite bad over
there."
The aid agency save the Children says millions of people have been
left homeless in the worst affected region in southern Burma.
The Rangoon-based organisation says there are harrowing accounts
emerging of villages where rotting bodies have begun decomposing,
posing a serious health risk for survivors.
Aid workers who flew over the southern region said entire villages
appear to have been washed away, and seen rice fields strewn with
bodies.
Save the Children's country director Andrew Kirkwood said there were
unconfirmed re****ts that people were dying as a result of receiving no
supplies of food or clean water since the storm hit on Saturday.
Aid agencies are calling for speedier access to survivors, with
Burma's military government still refusing to issue travel visas.
Kyi Minn says the delay in allowing international aid in has created a
problem.
"It will be a big problem but we cannot wait for the international aid
to come. We have to rely also on the local communities," he said.
"So what we are also doing is we also mobilise the local communities
there and nearby villages and there's a very high spirit of
voluntarism, so they are also helping each other.
"They bring in food and water supply to the affected area wherever
they could - so we are working together with the local communities
there."
The United Nations food agency says the cyclone damage to Burma's rice
crops may cause food shortages.
The storm has hit an area that produces 65 per cent of the country's
rice output, which puts a further strain on the already tight world
rice market.
Australia's Ambassador to Burma, Bob Davis, is in Rangoon and he says
there is concern the authorities are not doing enough to help the
relief effort.
"We are concerned though that they seemed not to be focusing on what
is the major priority one would have expected at this stage, and that
is to address the humanitarian problems and have that as a priority
issue rather than continuing their proposal to proceed with the
referendum," Mr Davis said.
Aid hampered
ABC correspondent Peter Lloyd says when aid supplies arrived at
Rangoon air****t, they had to be unloaded by hand.
"One of the things that was self evident at Rangoon air****t yesterday
when the Thai military flew in their supplies was that they flew them
in on large Hercules type aircraft. When they got there they
discovered that there was no forklifts, even at the air****t, to move
stuff around so they had to get off and do hand to hand, shoulder to
shoulder unpacking of the aircraft," he said.
"So, it's at that very elementary level that the infrastructure in
Burma because of years of disgraceful behaviour by the regime has left
this country bankrupt of the kind of infrastructure it needs to
respond to a crisis on this level."
He says the World Health Organisation (WHO) is most clearly concerned
with cholera and other water-borne disease breaking out.
"There are descriptions coming out from aid agencies who have flown
over the worst hit area in the south, describing villages that have
been wiped out and they're seeing rotting bodies in rice fields," he
said.
"Now this is the same water supply on which the survivors are going to
have to rely for drinking and bathing water. So there's a perfect
storm, if you like, a follow up which is confronting these people and
with which the aid agencies are desperately trying to negotiate their
way into to try to give assistance for."
And he says so far, there are not many signs that the military junta
will be doing anything to speed up the delivery of aid.
"Well on past indications you'd have to say, thinking back to our
coverage of the tsunami disaster in 2004, the regime at first ignored,
denied and effectively blamed. They said the scale of the disaster in
their country was nowhere near what it later was revealed to have
been. The resources simply weren't thrown at Burma because they said
they didn't need it," he said.
"Now the regime is showing no greater signs of opening up at the
moment. They've let in supplies from some of the ASEAN friendly
nations like Thailand who have used military aircraft to move some
pretty elementary stuff in, but the scale of the disaster clearly
calls for a much larger operation and so far the regime doesn't seem
to have acknowledged that, either in public or in practice by
rewarding the organisations who need to get in there with the visas."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/07/2238323.htm?section=world
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