RANGOON, Burma – The official death toll from Burma's cyclone has nearly doubled to almost 78,000 and another 56,000 people remain missing two weeks after the devastating storm, state television reported today. The report said the government has counted 77,738 people dead, up from 43,318 a day earlier. The number of missing doubled to 55,917, after being reported as 27,838 for most of the past week. The report also updated the number of injured to nearly 20,000. The new cyclone death toll is substantially higher than that suffered by all but one country from the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Indonesia had more than 130,000 dead and 37,000 missing from that disaster. The Red Cross said Wednesday it believed the total cyclone death toll may be as high as 127,990. The United Nations has said more than 100,000 may have died in Burma, the Southeast Asian country also known as Burma. The state TV announcement implied that the latest casualty toll may be close to the final figure. "The national disaster management committee carried out search and rescue and relief work and collection of data, promptly, immediately and extensively after the cyclone," it said. "However, due to the cyclone aftermath and inclement weather, the figure of dead, missing and injured was finalized on May 15." The announcement said there were 159 civil servants among the dead and 58 among the missing. The UN and the Red Cross say 1.6 million to 2.5 million people are in urgent need of food, water and shelter. The UN Children's Fund, or UNICEF, said today radio broadcasts are trying to help lost children find their families. "At the moment, it is difficult to know how many children have been separated or unaccompanied. We still have no indication of how many orphans there may be," said Shantha Bloemen, a UNICEF spokeswoman. Ramesh Shrestha, a Canadian who is the representative for UNICEF Burma, said hundreds of lost children have been found in the Irrawaddy delta alone – an area the size of Austria. "It's going to be a difficult task" finding their relatives, Shrestha said in a telephone interview from Rangoon. Entire neighbourhoods have been destroyed and bridges damaged when the powerful storm hit the low-lying region May 2-3. The children are brought to shelters in Rangoon where they can play with other children and be cared for while social workers attempt to trace their families. "We're trying to get as much detail as the child can tell the social worker – their name, their place of origin, their mother's name, father's name," Shrestha said. "But the information we have is still very limited and we will soon be doing some kind of photo ID for each of those children to make sure that we will be able to locate their closest relatives." UNICEF teams report that in areas they have visited some 40 per cent of those severely affected are children. If this proportion holds true across the disaster area, as many as one million children may need of urgent assistance, they say. Since Tuesday, UNICEF has sent 44 truckloads of relief goods including medical supplies, water-purification chemicals, tarpaulins, jerry cans for water and kitchen supplies to devastated areas, Shrestha said. Relief flights into the country are becoming more systematic, with landing permits being issued on the day UNICEF applies for clearance, Shrestha said. One UNICEF flight arrived Thursday, another today and two more are due in the next few days. In the absence of an organized relief effort by the government, ordinary people are stepping in, with shopkeepers handing out free rice porridge and medical students caring for the sick. Daw Mya Win, a 49-year-old grocer in a Rangoon suburb, cooks rice porridge every day to feed anyone who comes. She also sends pots of it to some of the thousands of homeless sheltering in Buddhist monasteries. College students are going door-to-door, handing out a few pennies to families for rice. "Whenever we distribute rice and clothing, I can see the faces of the cyclone victims light up. It is very rewarding to see them smile," said Nyi Nyi, 21. The United Nations said today that severe restrictions imposed by Burma's military junta have left aid agencies largely in the dark about the extent of survivors' suffering, two weeks after the deadly storm. John Holmes, UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, will go to Burma on Sunday to try to convince junta leaders to grant more access for UN relief workers and massively scale up aid efforts, said Amanda Pitt, a UN spokeswoman in Bangkok, Thailand. Some foreign diplomats have been invited by the regime to visit the hard-hit Irrawaddy delta on Saturday, said Shari Villarosa, the top U.S. diplomat in Rangoon. She did not provide details. It is not clear how much access the diplomats will have outside the conducted tour. Still, it will be the first time diplomats will be seeing first hand the effects of the cyclone as well as the highly criticized relief delivery effort by the government. Officials of various UN agencies called a news conference in Bangkok to give an update on their relief operations. But the most basic data was missing – from the extent of diseases and the number of refugee camps. They also couldn't say whether all survivors are in camps, on the move or still living in destroyed villages in the Irrawaddy delta. Cyclone Nargis also pounded Rangoon, Burma's main city. "The risk increases with each passing day," Pitt said, referring to the vulnerability of survivors to outbreaks of disease and other problems. Lack of clean water will be "the biggest killer" in Irrawaddy in the coming days, Thomas Gurtner, the head of operations for the international Red Cross, told The Associated Press in Geneva. "To be able to provide clean water to hundreds of thousands of people stranded in the (Irrawaddy) delta requires a major operation, which we have neither the material, the logistical nor the staff capacity to do," he said. Earlier, the World Health Organization said a few cases of cholera had been reported. But later today, WHO said Burma's Ministry of Health had not detected any cases. The junta insists Burmese nationals and government agencies, including the military, can handle relief operations, particularly aid distribution. "We still have obstacles to relief workers getting to the delta region, which doesn't help," Pitt said. "We are concerned about the effects on the people. It is clear, from what everyone is saying, the aid effort is far from over." The United Nations says the regime has issued 40 visas to its staffers and another 46 to nongovernment agencies but has confined the personnel to the immediate Rangoon area. Steve Marshall, a UN official who just came out of Burma, laid out the hurdles that aid agencies face. He said the military has set up checkpoints on the two main roads to the delta to keep foreigners out of the disaster zone. Even local staff have to negotiate with the military to gain access to the camps. "Things will still get done, but they will not be done as effectively, efficiently or as quickly, which means delays, which means increasing risk in terms of health, security and in terms of longer-term rehabilitation and getting back to a normal lifestyle," he said. http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/426110
argh....someone did tell me about this storm but i didnt know it was this bad....>_< cholera eh....my friend did tell me that the ppl didnt even bury the dead bodies....thats prob y... n u can imagine that this is going to cause problems for the ppl who live there... lots of the corpse got thrown into the river and so many ppl depend on that river.... its going to cause so much trouble afterwards especially since its sucha tropical country i think people in birma probably need more help than in china....=/...... awww....wth is happening....global warming??? so saddening....
The numbers could be much lower, but the Burmese Government don't let any help from outside get in the country. Even humanitarian help is not allowed in!!!
This toll is gonna shoot up even more. I just read that there were some Burmese had contracted Cholera. Just let the international aid in Burma.. Screw politics and fear of your people revolting cause they see how good the rest of the world is.
That's what you get when you have a dictator who thinks he's a god, which may be true. If you consider the devil a god.
hmmm...I read the newspaper tpday and saw some pictures that I did not want to see, I read the news and I did not want to read ...so I stopped...I felt so bad ///
^^def is a sad situation I was going to donate for the Burmese crisis but decided to donate to China instead since I do not know if Burma will ever open their doors to humanitarian relief...
