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10 May, 2008

Situation Update from UN Resident Coordinator in Burma

Over the past 48 hours, the following updates were sent out, by Dan Baker who is the UN Resident Coordinator for Burma & the UN DAC, to relief teams responding to Cyclone Nargis:


  1. The UN is now operating with a figure of 1, 5 million people severely affected. The official death figures are still 22 900, with 42 100 missing.
  2. At least 226 000 people has been reached with emergency aid by 7th of May.
  3. Message from UNDAC team to all relief teams: it is strongly recommended that only teams who possess pre-arrival visas are deployed to affected areas. Also it appears that visas are not available on arrival for persons other than diplomats from ASEAN+3 countries which are China, Japan, and South Korea
  4. There are now 23 international agencies either operating in the affected areas, or planning to be operational.
  5. IFRC and WFP relief flights have been landing in Yangon.
  6. 62 Bangladeshi doctors without visas were reportedly turned back just prior to the UNDAC team landing in Myanmar.
  7. The Government has now authorized the UN to airlift relief items to Myanmar from the United Nations Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD) in Brindisi.
  8. Travel restrictions outside Yangon, are separate from the visa issue.
  9. There is significant concern about the management of dead bodies in the country.
  10. People seem to be coping by migrating out of the affected areas.
  11. There has been some clearing of roads.
  12. Electricity has been partly restored in some areas of Yangon.
  13. UNICEF and Save the Children are currently leading on education and they are starting to plan for education to resume on 1 June, 2008.
  14. Communication remains a critical issue: Phone networks (land line and mobile) have been partly recovered, but are still very limited while only UN agencies currently have internet access, though WFP is hoping to be able to move in some communications equipment in the coming days.
  15. The water supply in Yangon has been switched back on but safe water remains a critical need in the Delta area. Queues for fuel in Yangon are 2-3km long.


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1 Comments Post a Comment
Blogger Roxana Farahmand said :

Wow, that's horrifying. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be in their shoes right now.

11 May, 2008 23:06