Maung Myo Min Thant is a changed boy. Until Cyclone Nargis tore into his village in Rangoon Division’s Kawhmu Township he was a normal three-year-old, who enjoyed playing with his pals in all winds and weather. Now he’s afraid to venture out in the rain, and he cries if he hears thunder.
His mother, Khin San Win, 35, said on the UNICEF web site: "My son is talking now but he hasn’t recovered. He used to play and bathe happily in the rain, like all children here. Now he refuses to go out when it rains. When the thunder comes, he cries.”
Yet Maung Myo Min Thant is comparatively lucky—he still has his parents. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children were orphaned by the cyclone, and the regime has announced it is setting up orphanages to accommodate them.
Junta leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe ordered the orphanages to be built after visiting the region, the government newspaper New Light of Myanmar said on Wednesday.
UNICEF's representative in Burma, Ramesh Shrestha, said the agency believes the number of children left without guardians is more than 600 and could rise.
"We have no idea as to how many there are, but from the bits and pieces that we have, there are more than 600 or 700 unaccompanied minors so far," Shrestha told The Associated Press. He said they included infants and children under two.
A volunteer relief worker in Laputta estimated that more than 1,000 children under the age of 13 in Laputta Township alone lost their parents in the cyclone.
According to The New Light of Myanmar, orphanages will be opened in Pyapon and Laputta, in the Irrawaddy delta. The newspaper did not say how many orphans the government estimated survived in the disaster, or how many orphanages would be built.
UNICEF estimates that 40 percent of those who died in the cyclone and its aftermath were children. Children who survived are now threatened by disease and starvation.
Diarrhea is the most prevalent disease. Aye Kyu, a Burmese doctor in Laputta, said hundreds of children there were being treated in temporary mobile clinics.
“Normally, four or five patients come to my clinic every day, but about 15 came to my clinic on Tuesday,” he said. “Most of them are children, suffering from diarrhea.”
About 20 children sheltering in a school in Gantkaw are suffering from diarrhea, he said.
The relief worker in Laputta said disease was spreading because of a lack of health education, insufficient sanitary arrangements and crowded living conditions.
“There are not enough shelters and toilets for refugees. It is very easy for disease to spread.”
Shantha Bloemen, a UNICEF communications official, told The Irrawaddy that apart from suffering illnesses like diarrhea, children were traumatized because of experiencing the cyclone.
She said UNICEF is working to secure continued education for child survivors after the cyclone destroyed their schools.
The British-based charity Save the Children estimates that 3,000 schools were destroyed by the cyclone, disrupting the education of half a million children.
Save the Children also estimates that 30,000 children under the age of five living in the Irrawaddy delta region were already malnourished before the cyclone and thousands of them now face death.
UNICEF workers are setting up “child-friendly” areas where children can play, paint and draw—a relief program that is intended to help them cope with the trauma of experiencing the cyclone or losing parents and other family members.
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