Poor sanitation causes disease outbreak in Bogalay

Aid workers on the ground in Irrawaddy division have reported continuing health and sanitation problems, while some cyclone victims in some remote areas are still waiting for assistance.

In Bogalay township, volunteers from the Human Rights Defenders and Promoters network have had to withdraw from Ayeyargyi village, where they had been helping storm victims, due to an outbreak of dysentery, according to HRDP members based locally.

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UN: Burma Aid Costs Soar as Junta Plays Hard Ball

The ruling junta's refusal to permit the use of military helicopters even from friendly neighboring countries is hampering aid to Burma's cyclone survivors and dramatically increasing costs, a United Nations report said.

More survivors of the disaster are now receiving some assistance, although in many cases it doesn't meet essential needs, the UN said in a report circulated Tuesday.

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Refugees Return to Relief Centers in Laputta

Thousands of cyclone survivors who were forcibly expelled from relief centers in Laputta over the last two weeks have returned, according to volunteer groups and local residents in Laputta Township.

This comes after international aid workers had said that cyclone survivors who had taken refuge in shelters were being driven out of towns by the local authorities and dumped in rural areas with no aid or supplies.

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Burmese Volunteers Struggle to Bring Aid to Cyclone Survivors

Men carry an injured elderly man at a refugee camp in Laputta, in the Irrawaddy delta. (Photo: AFP)

Burmese medical relief workers in the cyclone-devastated Irrawaddy delta region report that restrictions applied by local government authorities and soaring prices for supplies are preventing them from helping all those who urgently need aid.

“The medicines we brought along with us were not enough for the people who needed treatment,” said one volunteer doctor.

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Myanmar Needs `Sustained' Aid for Cyclone Survivors, UN Says

About 1.3 million people in the southern Irrawaddy River Delta, the main rice-producing area, have received assistance a month after Tropical Cyclone Nargis struck, Elisabeth Byrs of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in Geneva yesterday.

``There remains a serious lack of sufficient and sustained humanitarian assistance,'' Byrs said, according to a statement from the UN. About 49 percent of people in the delta have been reached, she said.

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Myanmar evicts cyclone victims from schools

After Cyclone Nargis destroyed their home, Htay Win and her two daughters found shelter in the classrooms of a nearby school on the outskirts of Myanmar's former capital Yangon.

But late last week, authorities forced them to move back to the ruins of their home, and then said the two daughters should return on Monday for classes.

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