More than six weeks have passed since Cyclone Nargis swept through the Irrawaddy Delta in southern Myanmar, leaving a trail of flattened villages and broken lives and arousing international sympathy that turned to anguish as the military government obstructed foreign aid.
Now doctors and aid workers who have gained access to remote areas of the delta are returning with a less pessimistic picture of the human cost of the delay in reaching survivors.
They say there have been no signs of starvation or widespread outbreaks of disease, and the number of lives lost because of the military government's slow response to the disaster appears to have been very few.
Relief workers here continue to criticize the government's secretive posture and obsession with security, its restrictions on foreign aid experts and the weeks of dawdling that left bloated bodies befouling waterways and survivors marooned with little food and supplies. But the specific character of Cyclone Nargis, the hardiness of villagers and efforts by private citizens to offer assistance mitigated against further death and sickness, aid workers say.
The storm that struck the night of May 2 and 3 killed great numbers of people, probably upward of 130,000, most of whom drowned in a tidal surge. But those who survived were not likely to need urgent medical attention, doctors say.
"We saw very, very few serious injuries," said Frank Smithuis, head of mission in Myanmar for Médecins Sans Frontières, a medical charity with a large presence in the country. "You were dead or you were in O.K. shape."
When the cyclone blew through the low-lying delta it swept away bamboo huts and in the hardest-hit villages left almost no trace of habitation.
Survivors who stayed afloat during the storm sometimes found themselves many kilometers from their homes when the waters receded. But unlike other natural disasters such as the recent earthquake in China, survivors were less likely to be injured by falling bricks, furniture, masonry or other heavy objects.
This, say doctors, aid workers and diplomats, appears to be the primary explanation why villagers were able to stay alive for weeks without any assistance. As they awaited aid, survivors, most of whom were fishermen and farmers, lived off of coconuts, rotten rice and fish.
"The Burmese people are used to getting nothing. They just did the best they could," said Shari Villarosa, the highest-ranking U.S. diplomat in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. "I'm not getting the sense that there have been a lot of deaths as a result of the delay."
Aid workers stress that of the estimated 2.4 million survivors affected by the storm thousands remain vulnerable to sickness and many are still without adequate food, shelter and supplies.
But their ailments remain - for now - minor. Medical logs from Médecins Sans Frontières show that of the 30,000 patients they treated in the six weeks after the cyclone most had flesh wounds, diarrhea or respiratory infections. The latter two afflictions are common in rural areas across Southeast Asia even in normal times.
The number of people in need of serious medical attention was judged low enough that officials at Merlin, a British medical charity that has operated in Myanmar for three years, canceled plans to bring in a team of surgeons in the days after the storm, said Paula Sansom, the manager of Merlin's emergency response team. Those patients who did require serious medical attention were treated at a local hospital by government surgeons.
For several weeks after the disaster the government prevented all but a handful of foreigners from entering the delta. Some journalists, including two reporters for this newspaper, were able to enter the country and slip past police checkpoints to reach remote corners of the delta and conduct interviews in dozens of villages.
Now a more comprehensive picture of the damage is being assembled by a team of 250 officials led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. They plan to release their findings next week.
The number of people killed in the storm may never be known. The government has not updated its death toll since May 16, when it said 77,738 people were killed and 55,917 were missing.
In a country that has not had a full census in decades, it is not even certain how many people lived in the area before the storm. Itinerant laborers who worked in the salt marshes and shrimp farms were probably not counted among the dead, aid workers say.
What is known is that in many villages women and children died in disproportionate numbers, said Osamu Kunii, chief of the health and nutrition section of the United Nations Children's Fund in Myanmar.
Source
No comments:
Post a Comment