Markku Niskala, secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
With the Myanmar government indicating it may allow aid workers into the country, the task of reaching Burma's remoter regions becomes even more pressing. Every night, the dire situation facing hundreds of thousands of cyclone survivors grows more and more desperate. Solutions tailored to Myanmar just have to be found.
At least one and a half million cyclone survivors remain homeless in Myanmar, many of them hungry, many of them weak, ailing or exhausted. As the rain pours down there is some relief; people can harvest drinking water. But the misery grows along with the burgeoning health threats.
The homeless – among 2.4 million people the United Nations estimates have been affected – are facing their twenty-first night since Cyclone Nargis swept in from the Bay of Bengal and crossed the Irrawaddy delta heading north-east. It will be wretched again, more wretched than last night. As each night passes conditions worsen and the need for basic life-saving aid becomes more urgent.
Every day, as the situation deteriorates, frustrations grow and debates rage amongst governments and aid agencies around the globe.
The danger, though, is that these frustrations and debates might end up becoming the focus – the end, rather than the means. In this difficult environment, we simply cannot allow this to happen. We simply cannot afford to stop moving forward.
Today, as they have for the past 20 days, thousands of Myanmar Red Cross volunteers will be working their way out to the worst affected parts of the delta, doing all that they can with the little they have to help shattered communities. These volunteers, who have the access that international staff and organizations do not, will continue to hand out basic relief items, provide simple first aid, and carry out assessments to help guide our response.
“There are many villages in Bogale which we are still trying to reach,” said one Red Cross volunteer when he returned to Yangon at the beginning of this week. “I was able to reach about 20 villages by boat. In one village we visited, there were over 15,000 people before the cyclone, but now only about 2,600 are left.”
More assistance is reaching the country and this week Red Cross and Red Crescent aid – much of it emergency shelter material – will increase dramatically. More than 30 flights have arrived in Yangon carrying in excess of 540 tons of essential relief goods. Another 200 tons have been cleared for this week and more flights are being confirmed daily.
But it remains a race against the clock and the logistical challenges grow with the rain. What reaches the cyclone-devastated areas can’t get there fast enough, and what does get through is not enough. A huge amount must follow.
Flexibility and creative thinking – as well as diplomacy – are needed to push the efforts forward. The Red Cross is looking at a rolling operation where volunteers will distribute shelter materials in one area, and assess the next before they return to Yangon. Then they’ll go back to deliver and assess again, and so on.
Other options being considered include harmonizing shelter and relief distributions. Distributions in small hamlets that dot the delta could see essential household goods, such as blankets, bed mats and kitchen essentials, provided along with shelter. To such ends we are setting up teams, working from hubs throughout the delta. The focus of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (Note: International Red Cross and Red Crescent) will be to support these teams; to train them, to give them resources and guidance.
But again, time is quickly running out. It’s been 21 nights in the rain-swept delta, 21 nights without shelter, without clean water and food and without basic first aid. We have to find ways to move forward.
“There are many more villages that I could not reach yet,” said the Red Cross volunteer in Yangon.