Two months after deadly cyclone struck Myanmar, devastation remains – UN

Two months after Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar, much of the destruction left in its wake is still evident, with flooded farmland and considerably damaged infrastructure, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said today.

The storm claimed over 130,000 lives and left more than 2 million people in need of humanitarian aid, contaminating water sources and obliterating schools.

“Yet the people of Myanmar have proven resilient, picking up the pieces of their lives with a quiet determination,” WFP said in a press released issued in Rome.

In the past two months, WFP has delivered over 18,000 tons of food to nearly 700,000 in the hardest-hit Ayeyarwady delta, which is the South-East Asian nation’s granary and hosts an extensive fishery industry on the coast.

The agency, however, faces a shortfall of almost $40 million in its $69.5 million operation to provide emergency food assistance to 750,000 people in Myanmar.

Last month, WFP announced that it was critically short of funds to keep a fleet of ten helicopters in the air to deliver aid to cyclone victims.

This week, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) delivered much-need supplies – including plastic sheets, blankets, mosquito nets to combat dengue fever and household goods – via helicopter to residents of Dani Seik village in the country’s south.

Over three-quarters of the area’s 1,700 residents were killed by Cyclone Nargis, and only 300 people remain in Dani Seik.