Aid for Myanmar cyclone victims

The following is a message from IDE Myanmar's director, Jim Taylor:

Almost two weeks after the cyclone tore through the Delta, thousands of families are now lined up along the high ground of rural roads with nothing to eat and virtually no shelter. Hundreds and hundreds of devastated but accessible villages have still not received one ounce of assistance. A massive public health crisis is emerging as people who are weak, traumatized, malnourished and often injured have no shelter or food. The amount of aid reaching victims is just a trickle compared to the millions of people in desperate need.

IDE Myanmar has mobilized 27 teams (about 100 staff members) to directly help families in 11 of the hardest hit areas. One of the most urgent needs is safe drinking water. To reach large groups in the shortest possible time, IDE is using its “water basket,” an inexpensive, portable 200-gallon water storage device, in conjunction with WaterGuard rapid chlorination systems and IDE treadle pumps to quickly refill the baskets. A single filling of one water basket provides the minimum water requirement for 250 people. Our teams are setting up 100 of these systems a day, reaching 25,000 people. We are also training INGOs and local CBOs to set up these clean water supply systems themselves. We are making water baskets available free of charge to all these groups; over 250 have been distributed so far.

IDE is also providing temporary shelter materials to the large numbers of families still residing in villages whose homes were destroyed during the cyclone. Traditional building materials such as palm fronds woven into thatch for roofs and siding are not available during this time of year, so rural households do not have materials for basic protection from the elements. IDE is providing plastic sheeting procured locally in Yangon, which can be used with locally available bamboo poles to construct roofs. We are currently providing shelter for 25,000 people each day.

Thank you for your generous donations. Our assistance is really getting to people in need, right now. The logistics of this effort is formidable, across a flooded and ravaged landscape. We’re procuring everything locally and prices for plastic sheeting are rising everyday. The latest realistic estimates are that over 100,000 people have died and about 2 million people are affected. This is indeed a crisis of unimaginable proportions.