The Burma director of Save the Children, a chap by the name of Andrew Kirkwood, has produced a short blog post each day since Cyclone Nargis hit Burma. They are being carried by the BBC website and, of course, on savethechildren.org. Anyone who is even slightly interested in the progress of the relief effort will, I’m sure, appreciate the time that he is putting into his posts and, of course, the rest of his work. His insights from Yangon offer us a glimpse of the exertions required to get aid out into the delta where it is needed most.
For a flavour of his take on the situation, in his post from 14 May he writes:
Another not-often-reported aspect of this crisis is the impact the cyclone will have on people’s longer-term livelihoods. This is the time of the year when people should be preparing the land for the monsoon paddy crop. For nearly two million people, this hasn’t been possible. So, without a monsoon paddy crop, there won’t be a harvest in October/November.
And this is in an area where at least a third of children were chronically malnourished before the cyclone. Yet another indicator that this is going to be a massive relief effort, which is going to go on for quite a long time.
1 response so far ↓
1 Land of Snarls // May 17, 2008 at 2:35 pm
“And this is in an area where at least a third of children were chronically malnourished before the cyclone. ” Is that a result of the sanctions?
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