'Malign neglect' may make Burma disaster six times as bad as tsunami

OXFAM, the international aid agency, last night warned that the death toll in Burma could reach 1.5 million, while the British government blamed the "malign neglect" of the Burmese regime for turning the disaster into a "humanitarian catastrophe of genuinely epic proportions".

The charity estimates at least 100,000 people were killed by Cyclone Nargis and say outbreaks of dysentery and cholera now threaten the lives of a further 1.4 million people if adequate aid does not reach the stricken areas. The toll would be six times that of the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004.

Nine days after the cyclone hit the Irrawaddy Delta, the military government is still delaying aid agencies.

Although some assistance is finally beginning to trickle through, non-govermental organisations (NGOs) fear the effect of outbreaks of dysentery and cholera, water-borne diseases that often follow a week to ten days after an initial disaster.

In a further blow, a cargo ship carrying relief supplies for more than 1,000 survivors sank yesterday after hitting a submerged tree trunk while travelling from Rangoon to Mawlamyinegyun.

Yesterday, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, criticised the Burmese government who are insisting on distributing aid themselves and preventing large numbers of humanitarian personnel from entering Burma.

He said:

"A natural disaster is turning into a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions in significant part because of the malign neglect of the regime. The basic point is that the scale of the response inside the country is so far inadequate to the scale of the disaster."

Despite the crisis engulfing the nation, the military junta went ahead with a constitutional referendum, part of a seven-step "roadmap to democracy" that is meant to culminate in multi-party elections in 2010 and bring an end to nearly five decades of military rule. Mr Miliband said the decision to hold a constitutional referendum in the country during the disaster was "bizarre".

He said there was a "very clear message" that the international community was ready to help – but this was only being "dimly heard" in the country. However, he reassured British people that if they had or were going to donate cash, it would be "properly used and it won't go into the regime's coffers".

Sara Ireland, Oxfam's regional director for East Asia, said that 1.5 million people were at risk unless a tsunami-like aid effort is mobilised.

She added: "In the Boxing Day tsunami, 250,000 people lost their lives in the first few hours, but we did not see an outbreak of disease because the host governments and the world mobilised a massive aid effort to prevent it from happening. We have to do the same for the people of Myanmar (Burma]."

Buddhist temples and schools in towns on the outskirts of the storm's trail of destruction are now makeshift refugee centres. While the reclusive military government is accepting aid from the outside world, including the UN, it will not let in the foreign logistics teams needed to transport the supplies as fast as possible into the inundated delta.

"Unless there is a massive and fast infusion of aid, experts and supplies into the hardest-hit areas, there's going to be a tragedy on an unimaginable scale," said Greg Beck of the International Rescue Committee.

In the town of Labutta, where 80 per cent of homes were destroyed, the authorities were providing just one cup of rice per family per day.

The scenes are the same across the delta, the former "Rice Bowl of Asia" where as many as 100,000 people are feared dead in the worst cyclone to hit the continent since 1991.

The UN World Food Programme said yesterday that it is moving aid to its field headquarters in Labutta using trucks provided by its long-time partners in Myanmar, including the Red Cross. The WFP has flown in seven shipments of aid, and an eighth was due to land yesterday.

The question of delivering aid with or without the junta's permission was raised by Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, who said over the weekend that a warship, Mistral, laden with 1,500 tonnes of rice aid, would arrive in Burmese waters by Wednesday.

He was quoted as saying that the ship's crew would distribute the aid to victims in the Irrawaddy delta "in small flat-bottomed boats or helicopters, or by French NGOs already on the ground". Mr Kouchner added: "It is out of the question for us to give aid directly to the junta."