SAVE THE CHILDREN

It took the leader of the Burmese military junta more than two weeks before meeting with the victims of cyclone Nargis today, and International aid assistance is still scarce.

 

So far the official numbers of deceased after the cyclone, is 78,000 and 56,000 people are still missing.  The numbers of dead is feared to rise and help is urgently needed.

 

Over 2,5 million people have been affected by the cyclone, of them, aid work has only reached one quarter.

 

When disaster strike, it is usually the weaker in society which is affected the hardest, and here Burma is no different. ‘Save the Children’ has reported that children constitute 40 percent of the victims.

 

30,000 children under the age of five are acutely malnourished and are threatened by death from starvation.

 

Jasmine Whitbread, UK’s chief executive of ‘Save the Children’ says: “When people reach this stage they can die in a matter of days…We need to reach more before it is too late.”

 

The military junta is though feeling the pressure to accept a full scale relief operation for survivors in the need of aid, and more foreign experts have been allowed to enter the country in recent days. But the government still insists that the consequence of the cyclone is not as great as claimed.

 

However, witnesses within the country are telling their story , a story completely different to the junta’s. A foreign business man characterised: “It was horrible beyond description…One hut with no roof was full of about 100 people, crouching in the rain. There was no food and no water. Each person had nothing more than the clothes on their bodies, shivering in the cold.”