SEVEN weeks have passed since Cyclone Nargis swept through the Irrawaddy Delta in southern Burma, leaving a trail of flattened villages and broken lives and arousing international sympathy that turned to anguish as the military government obstructed foreign aid.
While it is estimated that the cyclone may have killed 130,000 people, the number of lives lost subsequently is much lower than at first feared, in part because of the resilience of villagers used to coping with a brutal junta.
Reports from Burma,
obtained despite heavy media restrictions which don't allow this journalist to give their name, find relief workers continuing to criticise the government's secretive posture. They say the main problems include an obsession with security, restrictions on foreign aid experts, and weeks of dawdling that has left bloated bodies befouling waterways and survivors marooned with little food. But the specific character of the cyclone, the hardiness of villagers and aid efforts by private citizens have helped prevent further death and sickness, according to aid workers.
Most of the people killed by the cyclone, which struck on May 2-3, drowned. But those who survived were not likely to need urgent medical attention, doctors have said.
"We saw very, very few serious injuries," said Frank Smithuis, manager of the mission of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Burma. "You were dead or you were in OK shape."
The cyclone swept away bamboo huts throughout the delta; in the hardest hit villages, it left almost no trace of habitation. Some survivors carried away by floods found themselves many miles from home when the waters receded. But those who survived were not likely to be injured in the aftermath by falling rocks or collapsing buildings, as often happens during natural disasters, like the recent earthquake in China.
That appears to be the primary reason villagers were able to stay alive for weeks without aid. As they waited, the survivors, most of whom were fishermen and farmers, lived off of coconuts, rotten rice and fish. "The Burmese people are used to getting nothing," said Shari Villarosa, the highest-ranking US diplomat in Burma. "I'm not getting the sense that there have been a lot of deaths as a result of the delay."
The United States has accused the military government of "criminal neglect" in its handling of the disaster caused by the cyclone. Privately, many aid workers have, too.
But relief workers say the debate over access for foreigners and the refusal of the government to allow in military helicopters and ships from the US, France and Britain overshadowed a substantial relief operation carried out mainly by Burmese citizens and monks. They organised convoys of trucks filled with drinking water, clothing, food and construction materials that poured into the delta.
"It's been overwhelmingly impressive what local organisations, medical groups and some businessmen have done," said Ruth Bradley Jones, second secretary in the British Embassy in Rangoon, Burma's largest city. "They are the true heroes of the relief effort."
Aid workers emphasise that of the estimated 2.4 million Burmese seriously affected by the storm, thousands remain vulnerable to sickness and many are still without adequate food, shelter and supplies.
But their ailments are, for now, minor. Medical logs from MSF show that of the 30,000 people the group's workers treated in the six weeks after the cyclone, most had flesh wounds, diarrhoea or respiratory infections.
For several weeks after the disaster, the government prevented all but a small number of foreigners from entering the delta. Now a more comprehensive picture of the damage is being assembled by a team of 250 officials led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The officials plan to release their findings this week.
The number of people killed in the storm may never be known. The government has not updated its toll since May 16, when it said 77,738 people were killed and 55,917 were missing.
In a country that has not had a full census in decades, it is not even certain how many people had been living in the area before the storm. Itinerant people who worked in the salt marshes and shrimp farms were probably not counted among the dead, aid workers say.
But it is clear that in many villages, women and children died in disproportionate numbers, said Osamu Kunii, chief of the health and nutrition section of Unicef in Burma.
"Only people who could endure the tidal surge and high winds could survive," Kunii said. In one village of 700, all children under the age of seven died, he said.
With only minimal food supplies in villages, aid workers say, delta residents will require aid until at least the end of the year. The United Nations, after weeks of haggling with Burma's government for permission to provide assistance, is now using 10 helicopters to deliver supplies to hard-to-reach places and alerting relief experts at the earliest sign of disease outbreaks.
Still, the military government continues to make it difficult for aid agencies to operate. Earlier this month, the government issued a directive that accused foreign aid agencies and the United Nations of having "deviated from the normal procedures". The government imposed an extra layer of approvals for travel into the delta, effectively requiring that all foreigners be accompanied by government officials.
