Myanmar (Burma) Cyclone Disaster Relief

Real Medicine Partner – IDE Newsletter, September, 2008
Real Medicine Partner – NGO Yangon Recovery Report, June 26, 2008

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Update September 23, 2008
By Jim Taylor, Real Medicine partner 'IDE', Myanmar

A very brief update since our last report at the end of June: for the farm recovery effort we provided a monsoon paddy package of rice seed, access to tillers, fertilizer, etc. to 58,383 families across the hardest hit areas of the delta. We were able to deliver 10,387 metric tons of rice seed directly to 1,197 villages before the planting deadline of 31 July. This was the largest small farm relief effort among all international NGOs, the UN system and the government. Families had absolutely no idea how they were going to eat or what their future was going to be like until the seed arrived. In August we distributed 82,513 bags of fertilizer to the 58,000 families. September and October are the ‘lean food’ months as families wait for the rice harvest in November, so right now we are procuring and distributing critical food rice to 110,480 landless families (over 600,000 people) so they can make it to harvest time. Families in the delta are still in a very precarious condition. Debbie just came back today from a trip to the Delta and heard many, many in-person stories of families going hungry.

We could most definitely use additional funds, if they are available – particularly for landless families in need of emergency food. It costs $11.25 to help one family (of five persons) with enough rice.

Update May 18, 2008
By Real Medicine partner NGO in Yangon, Myanmar

The skies have turned anthracite grey this afternoon in Yangon – an ominous sign that heavy rains are on their way in a few minutes. Winds are pushing the temporary plastic windows up against the back of my chair as I write. On my desk are photographs taken earlier this week of families in the Irrawaddy Delta huddled under a fallen tree during a downpour. These are dark days in Myanmar. The magnitude of the crisis here is almost unimaginable. The latest realistic estimates are that over 100,000 people have died and about 2 million people are affected. It's hard to get one's head around this. We've had our staff out in the affected areas for over ten days now. They come back and forth with so many tragic stories. Whole families drowned. Sole survivors of an entire village. People with broken hips and major injuries with no one to care for them. Houses obliterated by 120mph winds. Countless swollen dead bodies floating in the small creeks and rivers that crisscross the Delta. Skin sandblasted raw from the wind. Families stripped of all of their possessions by the cyclone. Suicidal survivors. Traumatized children.

Almost two weeks after the cyclone tore through the Delta, thousands of families are now lined up along the high ground of rural roads with nothing to eat and virtually no shelter. Hundreds and hundreds of devastated but accessible villages have still not received one ounce of assistance. A massive public health crisis is emerging as people who are weak, traumatized, malnourished and often injured have no shelter or food. Children and elderly people with diarrhea are wasting away. The amount of aid reaching victims in just a trickle compared to the millions of people in desperate need.

We're focusing on providing emergency clean water – trying to reach 25,000 new people every day. And we've just ramped up our emergency shelter work – to 5,000 roofs each day (another 25,000 people a day). The logistics of this effort is formidable, across a flooded and ravaged landscape. We're procuring everything locally and prices for plastic sheeting are rising everyday. Our 27 teams are also providing a good bit of food and basic necessities – on an opportunistic basis. When we can do cash transfers of $5-10 per family in an orderly and transparent manner – usually at a village monastery. Just arranging for the cash to do all this - financial transfers in a country with no banking system and an official exchange rate – is taking a great deal of ingenuity and lots of trust. We are really stretching to gear up rapidly to do all this on a meaningful scale. But when we see the pictures and hear about so many people suffering, it feels like so little. This indeed is a crisis of unimaginable proportions.

May 12, 2008

From the afternoon of Friday May 2nd until Saturday May 3rd 2008, Tropical Cyclone Nargis slammed along the coast of Myanmar (Burma) devastating large parts of the low-lying delta region of the Irrawaddy River before ripping through Myanmar’s largest city Yangon (estimated population 6 million) for over ten hours. It cut a path 50 miles wide by 200 miles long, killing an estimated 200,000 people and thousands of animals. Almost 95 per cent of all homes in the rural areas have been destroyed. Entire villages were washed away by 12 foot waves and winds up to 192 miles per hour. Families lost many members, especially small children and the elderly who could not cling to trees for survival. Over a million people are estimated to be homeless. These numbers of deaths and homeless are preliminary estimates and may go much higher.

The effects of the disaster are only now emerging as reports come in from remote areas of the Delta as thousands of refugees seek shelter in towns further north. A week after the cyclone hit, a mere trickle of aid is getting to the affected areas. Disease, hunger and thirst are claiming more victims as the days go by.

The cyclone has hit against a backdrop of growing and entrenched vulnerability and food insecurity among hundreds of thousands of rural families in Myanmar. Farming has been the most important means of livelihood for over 70 percent of Myanmar’s population. Many of the rural poor are also landless families who work as casual laborers on farms; they earn less than $1 a day and their employment is only seasonal. The Irrawaddy Delta, with its high population density is considered the “rice bowl” of the country. But now that crop has been destroyed.

May is the start of monsoon season in Myanmar. The constancy of rain and mud amidst this destruction have reduced the hopes of survival for those who remain, waiting for the aid organizations to arrive. Survivors are without shelter, food, and clean water, without means of disposing of the thousands of corpses, without medicine or medical care for their injuries and without defenses against imminent outbreaks of killers like cholera, dysentery, pneumonia, dengue fever and malaria that thrive in such decrepid conditions.

Real Medicine is partnering with non-governmental organizations in Myanmar, which are responding to the cyclone crisis by mobilizing staff into thousands of villages serving over 3,000,000 people of the Irrawaddy Delta. These workers are actively providing immediate relief by installing clean water systems, temporary shelter from the rains, and food and basic medical necessities for the refugees.

Please help us help them. Please Donate today.

Every penny donated is immediately going straight to the refugee aid effort. Materials are available in Yangon and teams of aid workers are getting them into the villages.

Map dated May 8, 2008, Courtesy of UN Volunteers