CARE helps over 80,000 people affected by Cyclone Nargis
15 May 2008
Two weeks on from cyclone Nargis, the official death toll stands at 78,000 with 56,000 people still missing. CARE ’s staff in Myanmar are working in the badly affected areas of Yangon and Pathein in the Irrawaddy Delta to provide safe water, sanitation, food and basic family items to some of the millions of survivors who are struggling to piece their lives back together.
CARE distribution in Yangon, Myanmar.
©CARE
We have already reached more than 80,000 people with water, food or basic items such as toothbrushes, t-shirst, soap and cutlery. These include 800 people sheltering in a school in Pathein. We are providing diesel fuel on a daily basis to the Water Department enabling the delivery of clean water to approximately 75,000 people.
Nay Myo Zaw, one of CARE’s staff on the ground, has been distributing blankets to survivors who were camped in a high school building. Nay spoke to a grief-stricken fisherman whose life had been changed forever. Before the cyclone, he had a family of five: a wife and three children. He tearfully told Nay that none of them had survived.
While visiting one of the 27 camps in Myaung Mya Township which shelters approximately 10,000 survivors, Nay met a man who witnessed his neighbours’ house, with four people inside, be literally torn from the ground and blown away. Within minutes his own house was swept from its foundations by the floodwater and he and his family were drifting rapidly. The family managed to survive by holding onto a tree until the floodwaters subsided.
We really need your donations so that we can keep helping the people who need it most, just £10 can buy a kit that will provide a package that contains t-shirts, sarongs, mosquito nets, plastic sheeting, blankets, cooking and eating utensils, toothbrushes and toothpaste amongst other things.
Please make a donation online to the DEC Myanmar / Cyclone Appeal >>
or call:
0870 60 60 900
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