Relief Charities Face Huge Challenges in Myanmar

Relief organizations working to assist victims of the cyclone in Myanmar face many obstacles, including inadequate telecommunications systems and a lack of cooperation from the local military, reports The New York Times.

One such charity, Unicef, sent five assessment teams to the region and is preparing supplies for delivery, reports The Times in a second story on the disaster. The number of displaced people could reach one million, by United Nations estimates, the paper reports.

“Our biggest fear is that the aftermath could be more lethal than the storm itself,” Unicef’s Caryl Stern tells the Times.

Christine South, Asia-Pacific operations coordinator at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, tells the Los Angeles Times that her organization is awaiting the go-ahead from the Myanmar government to send more relief teams into the region. The organization already has five teams surveying the damage, the paper reports.

World Vision’s Kyi Minn did not hedge when speaking to CNN.

“It could be worse than [the] tsunami,” Dr. Minn said, citing the December 2004 disaster that killed more than 150,000 people in Southeast Asia.

An article in The Wall Street Journal delves into the ripple effects of the cyclone’s damage to a major rice-producing region and the developing international food crisis. Some countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, for example, were counting on rice supplies from Myanmar to add to their own, the newspaper reports.

In Boston, Oxfam America officials are meeting today to plan how to assist with the relief effort, reports The Boston Globe. Among their helpers are Harvard University students, already raising money with T-shirt sales.

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