By Alexander G. Higgins
The Associated Press
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press
GENEVA — No helicopters. Almost no boats. Floods and fallen trees on the roads.
Many obstacles are keeping relief workers from reaching most of the hundreds of thousands of people without food or safe drinking water in cyclone-devastated Myanmar, organizers said Friday.
With up to 1.9 million people homeless, injured or threatened by disease and hunger, only one out of 10 have received some kind of aid in the six days since the cyclone hit, said Anders Ladekarl, secretary-general of the Danish Red Cross.
“We are simply lacking transportation. There are almost no boats and no helicopters. This is really a nightmare to make this operation run,” Ladekarl said in a satellite telephone interview from Myanmar to Danish broadcaster DR.
As aid agencies awaited government clearance for more aid shipments, staff and transport, the U.N. suspended further flights over food and supplies it said was seized Myanmar’s government on Friday.
The government said it had taken control of the supplies to distribute them.
U.N. health officials warned of a growing risk of waterborne diseases as hundreds of thousands of cyclone victims remained without safe drinking water and sanitation. Some 55 cases of diarrhea and more than 20 of dysentery have already been reported from Yangon, the World Health Organization said.
“The situation on the ground is extremely serious. I think we only see the tip of the iceberg,” said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Many relief agencies, including the Red Cross, were able to get a quick start on the operation because they already had operations in the country. But they have run into problems with slow government approval of new aid shipments and refusal to admit additional staff.
Governments have sent their own planeloads of aid, but there was little sign of the shipments, Ladekarl said Friday after his arrival in Yangon, the country’s largest city.
“I got through an airport that normally would be full of emergency relief planes and a lot of relief. There was only one little plane,” said Ladekarl, who already had a visa to visit Myanmar before the storm hit.
Even as they sought to persuade the military junta to open up for more assistance, governments have been increasing the amounts they are donating.
Japan announced it is giving $10 million through agencies like the United Nations Children’s Fund, High Commissioner for Refugees and World Food Program, in addition to tents, generators, blankets and other supplies it announced earlier.
But the amount brought in so far is far short of needs, officials said.
“We’ve seen the scale of the destruction and the suffering is huge,” said Hugues Robert, head of Medecins Sans Frontieres emergency operations in Geneva. “But we will not be able to address these urgent needs without the necessary additional supplies and the arrival of more experienced emergency staff, particularly experts in water and sanitation.”
MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders, will send its first planeload of food, sanitation and other supplies to Myanmar on Friday afternoon, said Fred Baldini in the organization’s Geneva office.
The aid group already had 40 foreign workers and 1,000 local volunteers in Myanmar before the cyclone, and they have all been redeployed to help in the recovery effort with the permission of national authorities, Baldini said.
“There has been no problem,” he said. But MSF has not received visas for additional aid workers to arrive from abroad.
Carsten Voelz, Geneva-based operations manager for CARE International, said the agency was still using supplies it already had in Myanmar and was planning to bring in more, but had yet to request permission from the government to receive a shipment.
“It’s going OK for us because we are basically working in the areas where we working before the disaster,” Voelz told The Associated Press. “So we have established relationships, communities know us, so we have access to those places.”
CARE has more than 500 staff on the ground that have worked with the agency for the last 14 years.
He said the agency was buying water purification tablets and jerry cans in Myanmar that are produced in the country.
“That makes it easy and fast for us and it’s also a lot cheaper than flying it in,” Voelz told the AP.
He said that CARE on Thursday distributed water to 10,000 people and food to 15,000 and has started distribution of 50,000 “family kits” containing cooking supplies and other essentials.
If allowed to expand, Voelz said, “we will need to scale up significantly in country and hire a lot more Burmese staff.”
James East, a Bangkok-based spokesman for World Vision, said his agency has a Myanmar staff of 580, mostly locals, and they have been distributing water, rice, clothing and other supplies in the Yangon area.
“We’ve got tents, tarpaulins, water, sanitation kits, pills, there are some medicines, water-purification units — that kind of basic stuff you need when you’ve lost everything,” East said.
The agency would like to bring in those supplies as soon as permission is granted, he said.
“It’s very important that aid gets to those who most need it because things like waterborne diseases have potentially a very big impact on the health of children,” East told the AP. “Children will be drinking dirty water in the delta. There’s no doubt about it.”
Associated Press writers Jan Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, Eliane Engeler in Geneva and other AP correspondents contributed to this report.