Activity Report 2010 - Sovereign Military Order of Malta in the United ...

Burma/Myanmar
How one charity got to cyclone
victims first
TOTAL AREA:
678,500 sq km
POPULATION:
48,137,741
GDP
PER CAPITA:
$1,200
LIFE EXPECTANCY
AT BIRTH:
63.39 years
Malteser International was
able to deliver food and
medicine in Burma/Myanmar
despite the political
difficulties.
Food distribution chain
[Reproduced with the kind
permission of The Catholic
Herald, London. First
published 13 June 2008.]
Heavily pregnant, in tears
the whole time, a Burmese
aid worker for Malteser
International insists on
accompanying the first
relief convoy from Rangoon
back to her hometown Labutta, a city at
the heart of the Irrawaddy Delta region.
Only nine days earlier the cyclone
caught her family and hundreds of
thousands of Burmese living in the
Irrawaddy Delta region by surprise.
The young mother-to-be has lost 50
family members including her parents,
siblings and grandparents, who died
trying to save themselves in a
warehouse. They were clinging to the
walls when the building was blown away
and the tidal waves consumed them.
They were swept away by floods which
have devastated the region, leaving
some 78,000 people dead, 56,000
missing and over two million in need of
food, water, medicine and shelter,
according to United Nations estimates.
Hurricane Katrina, which wrought havoc
in the United States in 2005, claimed
fewer than 2,000 lives. One of our aid
worker’s relatives survived the
onslaught and came to Rangoon for
help. Thanks to her job, she could
secure a car with medical supplies for
her surviving family member who
returned to Labutta to give those bodies
that could be found a decent funeral.
In the meantime, she and her husband
have placed their house in Labutta at
the disposal of internally displaced
persons. Despite her heartbreak and
her loss she is able to soldier on, and
continues her work for Malteser
International. Others have not been so
lucky.
Last week American navy ships left the
vicinity, having been unable to deliver
the relief supplies with which they were
laden. Foreign aid agencies have been
struggling to get into the country to
deliver basic supplies, medicine and
sanitation. And a month after the
cyclone struck, supplies are still not
getting to villages in the affected
regions and foreign aid workers are
being forced to wait for permission to
leave Ragoon for the Irrawaddy Delta.
Despite international pressure and
offers of aid, the military regime which
has ruled the country since 1976 has
obstructed many of the efforts to help
its people. The Burmese government
has promised the United Nations
Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon that it
would speed up the bureaucracy which
is keeping foreign aid workers out of the
Irrawaddy Delta, but agencies still
report delays. The junta has insisted
that its response to the natural disaster
has been prompt, but UN reports say
that only a quarter of the people in need
have received food and water while
another 200,000 are struggling to
survive. There have been reports of
malaria outbreaks, and much of the
work that will have to be done is sanitation
and disease control.
In the midst of all this political back and
forth Malteser International, the charitable
arm of the Order of Malta, has
been on the ground since before the
cyclone hit. It has been one of the few
international aid agencies which has
operated in Burma since 2001 and has
subsequently circumvented the ban on
foreign aid workers in the region by
using some 45 trained Burmese staff
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SOVEREIGN MILITARY HOSPITALLER ORDER OF ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM OF RHODES AND OF MALTA