Aid organizations working to assist quake-struck Myanmar

By Christopher Wells

Authorities in Myanmar have confirmed the deaths of more than 2,700 people in last week’s earthquake, while expressing fears that the total number of dead will continue to rise.

More than 4,500 people were injured in the quake, which struck near Mandalay, the nation’s second-largest city. More than 440 people are still missing.

“The time window for critical search and rescue is narrowing,” said Marcoluigi Corsi, the Myanmar Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Speaking with reporters via video link from Yangon, Corsi noted that shelter, clean water, medicine are in short supply. “People in affected areas spent the night in the open because there is no electricity or running water,” he said.

The International Red Cross echoed those concerns, with one IRC worker saying, “Having lived through the terror of the earthquake, people now fear aftershocks and are sleeping outside on roads or in open fields.

Meanwhile, aid agencies worried that the ongoing civil war in Myanmar was hampering aid efforts. Amnesty International said the country’s ruling military junta needed to allow aid to be sent to areas of the country under rebel control.

“Myanmar's military has a longstanding practice of denying aid to areas where groups who resist it are active," Amnesty's Myanmar researcher Joe Freeman said. He insisted that the government “must immediately allow unimpeded access to all humanitarian organisations and remove administrative barriers delaying needs assessments.”