'Unimaginable tragedy' if Burma continues to delay aid
Source: 12/May/2008 Intellasia | Sydney Morning Herald
May 12, 2008 - 7:51:50 AM Desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis poured out of Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta in search of food, water and medicine but aid workers said thousands would die if emergency supplies did not get through soon.

Children wait for food at a relief center in Kyauktan, some 48 kms south-east of Yangon. Aid groups said Sunday that supplies trickling into cyclone-hit Myanmar were far less than was needed, as the faltering relief effort suffered a new blow with the sinking of a Red Cross boat. (AFP/Khin Maung Win)

Buddhist temples and schools in towns on the outskirts of the storm's trail of destruction are now makeshift refugee centres for women, children and the elderly - some of the 1.5 million people left clinging to survival.

The reclusive military government is accepting aid from the outside world, including the United Nations, but has made it clear it will not let in the foreign logistics teams needed to transport the aid into the inundated delta.

"Unless there is a massive and fast infusion of aid, experts and supplies into the hardest hit areas, there's going to be a tragedy on an unimaginable scale," said Greg Beck of the International Rescue Committee.

Survivors pray at the Mid-River Pagoda after Cyclone Nargis hit a village in Kyauktan, southeast of Yangon May 11, 2008. Desperate survivors of the cyclone poured out of Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta on Sunday in search of food, water and medicine but aid workers said thousands of them would die if emergency supplies do not get through soon.(Strringer/Reuters)

In the delta town of Labutta, where 80 per cent of homes were destroyed, the authorities were providing just one cup of rice per family per day, a European Commission aid official told Reuters.

The scenes are the same across the delta, the former Rice Bowl of Asia where as many as 100,000 people are feared dead in the worst cyclone to hit the continent since 1991, when 143,000 people died in neighbouring Bangladesh.

"We have 900 people here but we only have 300 lunch boxes. We gave it to the women and children first. The men still have not had any food," one woman said at a relief centre in the town of Myaung Mya, 100km west of Rangoon. "More are coming every day," she said.

The lives of 1.5 million people in cyclone-affected areas are at risk due to disease outbreaks unless a tsunami-like aid effort is mobilised, international agency Oxfam said.

"In the Boxing Day tsunami 250,000 people lost their lives in the first few hours, but we did not see an outbreak of disease because the host governments and the world mobilised a massive aid effort to prevent it from happening," Oxfam's Regional Director for East Asia Sara Ireland told reporters in Bangkok.
"We have to do the same for the people of Myanmar."

A homeless villager, with traditional makeup on, gathers at the monastery of Kyi Bui Khaw village, in Pyapon, a town in the Irrawaddy delta of Myanmar, on Sunday, May 11, 2008, a week after devastating cyclone Nagris slammed into the low-lying region and Yangon.(AP Photo)

The cyclone is one of the worst disasters since the December 26, 2004, tsunami that hit a dozen countries along the Indian Ocean.

The government's official death toll stands at 23,350 dead and 37,019 missing from the May 2 disaster. Most of the victims were killed by the 3.5m wall of sea water that slammed into the delta.

The UN has appealed for $US187 million ($198.26 million) in aid, even though it is still not confident the food, water, medicines, bedding and utensils flown in will make it to those most in need because of the junta's reluctance to admit international relief workers.