After the Cyclone: Fear and Disease
Pastor Dale Morgan
Monday, May. 12, 2008
*After the Cyclone: Fear and Disease*
By A TIME correspondent/Laputta
Aung Than Htay's injuries seem slight until he tells you how he got
them. The arms of the 30-year-old fisherman are grazed from wrists to
armpits. A week before, he had clung to the trunk of a palm tree as a
12-foot storm surge carried off his wife, his infant son, and his
four-year-old daughter. "My wife tried to hold on to my waist, but the
water dragged her away," he says. He clung to the tree for three hours.
When he finally descended, the water in his village of Ka Ka Yon still
came up to his chest. He found the body of his seven-year-old daughter
at the foot of the tree. He never found the rest of his family.
Aung Than Htay is walking along the road to Laputta, a cylone-shattered
delta town teeming with tens of thousands of refugees. Before Cyclone
Nargis hit, the population of this sleepy riverside town was 30,000.
With the hungry, homeless and bereaved pouring in from the delta —
80,000 have perished in this district alone, according to local aid
workers — that refugee population has now reached six figures.
"I've had long experience of emergencies and I've never seen anything
like this," says Julio Sosa Calo, head of mission in Laputta for the
German relief group Malteser International. "We need a huge humanitarian
response. What we're doing now is too little compared to the need."
There are now 58 camps in town, most of them set up in temples,
monasteries and schools. More survivors arrive every day. "To be honest,
we're all a bit lost when it comes to numbers," confesses Sosa Calo.
"People know that this is the place where they can get assistance, so
they're coming in huge numbers."
Laputta should be the center for a gargantuan relief effort. Should be,
but isn't. Trucks carrying food and water ply the rough road leading to
this isolated town, but not in the large convoys associated with a
disaster of this scale. Laputta's buildings are collapsed or roofless,
its streets clogged with fallen trees, smashed boats, and the
rain-soaked debris of thousands of desperate families. Local aid workers
estimate that 12,000 people have died and 3,000 are missing in Laputta
town and its immediate surroundings.
There are tens of thousands more in need in even more remote parts of
the district, but the few foreign agencies in town are struggling to
help them. "We don't have the means," says Sosa Calo. "To reach affected
areas we have to use the river. And most of the boats in the area were
destroyed by the cyclone." One area in Laputta district called Pyin Sa
Lu was hit badly by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which destroyed
houses and almost certainly lives (the junta released no data), then
struck again by Cyclone Nargis. This time, more than 10,000 people died.
The military has forbidden expatriate aid workers from entering such
areas. Local fishermen have been instructed not to take foreigners on
their boats. According to one aid agency, soldiers have told villagers
that any foreigner seen in this forbidden zone during the day will be
turned around, and if seen during the night, they will be shot. "Basic
needs are not being met, particularly in remote areas, which are
difficult to access without boats," says a Western aid worker who asked
not to be named. But these logistical problems could be overcome
"without much difficulty if it weren't for the [junta's] restrictions."
Many survivors in the outlying regions are sticking close to the ruins
of their homes in case missing family members show up. But more than 10
days after the cyclone hit, that is unlikely. "Missing means dead," says
a Burmese health expert returning from Laputta. "They're not coming back."
Other survivors are staying put in an attempt to recultivate their land.
Rice scheduled to be planted in the coming weeks has to be harvested in
October, by far the biggest of the twice-yearly crops. But the farmers
face appalling odds. Their fields are inundated with sea water and there
are no pumps to drain them; the buffalo that pull their wooden plows are
drowned. Laputta resident Myint Shwe tells how the cyclone claimed 20 of
his cows and buffalo, wrecked his house, and destroyed his boat. He can
now only plow his land "if the government gives us equipment," he says.
"No equipment, no rice." He is unlikely to get it. He and his large
family have yet to receive aid of any kind.
Fishermen face grave challenges too. Their boats are smashed or sunken.
The powerful cyclone shifted sandbanks into unknown positions, making
once-familiar waterways perilous to navigate. And everywhere human
bodies float uncollected. Another Laputta aid worker counted 45 corpses
in an hourlong voyage through the delta. "The smell is terrible," he
says. With all the rain, bodies hastily buried in village graveyards by
relatives are now resurfacing.
These terrible conditions could drive thousands more to flee to
overcrowded camps in Laputta town. Every square foot of sheltered space
at Lay Htat monastery is occupied by survivors — perhaps as many as
8,000, estimates Malteser, which runs a small clinic there. Most are
children. Hundreds of people sit on scraps of plastic or tin laid out on
the mud beneath the monastery, which rests on stilts. There are hundreds
more sleeping in the floor above and in other buildings on the compound.
Some are surrounded by what few possessions they could salvage. Others
have nothing at all. Some women are boiling their precious rice on small
fires, and the air is thick with wood smoke. One man taps my shoulder
and points to his mouth: no food. Children refill plastic drinking
bottles from large ceramic jars full of murky water.
A week ago, most new patients at Laputta hospital were being treated for
cyclone injuries, such as lacerations and bone fractures. Some men have
what look like serious burns or grazes on their backs. They had hunched
over to protect themselves during the cyclone, and the rain and wind had
sandblasted the skin from their shoulders.
Injury cases have since tailed off. These days, a quarter of new
patients have diarrhea. Now, lack of shelter increases the risk of
respiratory disease. The cramped conditions provide the perfect
conditions for disease to spread, although there have been no epidemics.
"Not yet," says Alexandra Piprek, a doctor with Malteser. "Give it a few
days and we'll see. The concentration of people is very high." Piprek
also fears for the mental health of the survivors. Some are showing
signs of trauma, such as listlessness or hyperactivity. "Many people
have lost everything," she says.
Only a handful of foreign aid agencies — including UNICEF, Doctors
Without Borders and Merlin — are now working in Laputta, and all had a
strong presence in Burma before the cyclone hit. With the junta barring
access to many expatriate aid workers, the Burmese citizens on their
staff are vital. Unlike foreigners, their movements in the delta is not
restricted, at least not yet. Julio Sosa Calo says that more of
Malteser's Burmese experts — including a second doctor, a nurse and
three water and sanitation specialists — would arrive in the coming days.
But the massive influx of aid and aid workers has yet to begin, despite
the delta's increasing needs. Take the road north from Laputta and you
arrive at Maungmya, where there are another 12,900 refugees in 27 camps,
estimates Save the Children. Walk Laputta's streets, and you move
through a gloomy landscape of sodden brown debris where the only bright
color — a flash of electric green — brings no comfort. They are rice
seedlings which these farmers would have soon been planting. Scattered
by the cyclone, watered by the heavy rains since, they now sprout
useless amid the ruins.