A senior UN official has now appealed for U.S. $187 million in aid forBurma, citing “clear, massive need” in the cyclone-ravaged country, asa veteran health expert predicted major disease outbreaks there.
The U.S. $187 million may still be revised, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes said atU.N. headquarters in New York. It aims to cover 12 sectors includingfood, shelter, sanitation, and agriculture as well as other support andservices.
Governments and relief agencies have so far pledged more than U.S. $38million in aid and other support. The Burmese government has pledged $5million and is providing military helicopters to distribute reliefsupplies, Holmes said.
“I hope they will step up those efforts further given the clear,massive need,” Holmes said, a day after the secretive Burmese juntaeffectively halted U.N. aid shipments by refusing to admit foreign aidworkers.
U.N. officials currently estimate that Cyclone Nargis—which struckimpoverished and tightly closed Burma last weekend—has “severelyaffected” between 1.2 million and 1.9 million people, with an estimated63,000 to 100,000 people dead.
“I strongly urge the government to reconsider its attitude in view ofthe urgency of the situation and to do all it possibly can to speed upaid and relieve the suffering of its people,” Holmes said, referring tothe junta’s approval of aid worker visas.
Disease predicted
In Washington, an epidemiologist from Johns Hopkins University withvast experience in Burma meanwhile predicted a second wave of deaths inBurma from preventable diseases.
Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Dr.Chis Beyrer said cholera, E coli infection, and measles outbreaks werelikely, in numbers far beyond what Burma's neglected healthinfrastructure is capable of managing.
“We have been for a long time dealing with the reality—those of us whohave been involved in health and human rights in this country—that theregime does not fundamentally have the interests of its people as itsprimary concern,” Beyrer said.
Cholera outbreaks are likely because of the widespread flooding of wells and mixing of waste water with drinking water, he said.
News of other recent cholera outbreaks has been suppressed, he said. Ecoli infections, a major cause of diarrhea and death by dehydration,will also pose major problems, he said, and death rates could reach 20percent.
Burma’s health-care infrastructure has badly eroded, partly because ofinternational sanctions but also because of official neglect, withBurmese per capita public health care spending among the lowest in theworld.
“There simply aren’t going to be the clinics, physicians, and careproviders out there—particularly in remote rural areas—to treat peoplewith acute injuries,” Beyrer said.
Aid diverted
Aid groups want to monitor aid distribution largely because they wantto ensure the country's military doesn't dispense it to politicalsupporters, which some Burmese say is already occurring.
One resident of Twante township, in the hard-hit Irrawaddy delta region, on Friday described the aid diversion as blatant.
“The division commander came on May 7 and dropped the things [aid],saying they were for the victims. They were distributed to the campsand schools where the victims were,” the resident said in an interview.
“On the boxes, it was written ‘General Myint Shwe’—it’s stamped on theboxes. There are snacks and Quaker oatmeal in those boxes. They’ve beenstamped ‘General Myint Shwe.’ In those schools they videotaped and tookpictures. Soon after the division commander had left, the townshipchief and the township SPDC [junta] chairman took everything away fromthe victims. These things never reached the victims.”
According to a 2007 report in the British medical journal The Lancet,nearly 90 percent of Burma's 52 million people are at risk of malaria,while the country has one of the highest rates of tuberculosis in theworld with nearly 97,000 cases detected every year.
Some 25,000 new infections of HIV are recorded every year, whileone-third of children are chronically malnourished. But the juntaspends less than U.S. $1 on per person on health care every year, or 3percent of the national budget.
Original reporting by RFA’s Burmese service and Richard Finney. Burmeseservice director: Nancy Shwe. Executive producer: Susan Lavery. Writtenand produced in English by Sarah Jackson-Han.