05/16/2008
Torrential tropical downpours lashed Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta on Friday, deepening the misery of an estimated 2.5 million destitute survivors of Cyclone Nargis and further hampering the military government's aid efforts.
If emergency supplies do not get through in much greater quantities, foreign governments and aid groups say starvation and disease are very real threats. Some cholera has been confirmed among survivors, but the number was in line with case levels in previous years, the World Health Organization (WHO) said. "We don't have an explosion of cholera", Maureen Birmingham, acting WHO representative in Thailand, told reporters in Bangkok. Diarrhoea, dysentery and skin infections have afflicted some cyclone refugees crammed into monasteries, schools and other temporary shelters after the devastating May 2 storm.
The European Union's top aid official, Louis Michel, met ministers in Yangon on Thursday and urged them to admit foreign aid workers and essential equipment to keep the death toll, which the Red Cross says could be as high as 128,000, from rising.
Myanmar state television raised its official death toll on Thursday to 43,328. Independent experts say the figures are probably far higher, with British officials saying the number of dead and missing may be 200,000.
Two weeks after the storm tore through the heavily populated Irrawaddy delta rice bowl, food, medicine and temporary shelter have been sent in dribs and drabs to devastated communities. In Kunyangon, the junta has started distributing small amounts of emergency food. But around the town, the countryside remains a mess of half-submerged trees, snapped electricity pylons or bamboo poles -the skeletal remains of a house- leaning at crazy angles.
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