Aid distribution a challege for agencies
Updated
Planeloads of medicines due to arrive in Rangoon today.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Richard Bridle Deputy Regional Director of the UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office in Bangkok.
BRIDLE: We actually do already have one air shipment went in last Thursday I think it was, so three million water purification tablets. We've got three plane loads should be going in today and that adds to the supplies we had prepositioned, that we were distributing from day one of the disaster and supplies that we have been able to source inside country. So from a supply point of view, we are not looking at that bad a picture. It's really just a question of fairly slow progression of distribution of those supplies.
We've been able to reach so far about half of the affected townships. For the others, it's a bit of a logistical problem, because they are down in the Irawali Delta, the mouth of the Irawali Delta for which we would need either helicopters or sea transport.
LAM: Indeed, we also had reports of a Red Cross boat sinking in the river. So what information do you have about your supplies reaching out to those most in need.
BRIDLE: We're pretty confident that they are reaching out to those most in need. The distributions are being done through the Myanmar Red Cross. A lot of those we have our own people accompanying the transportation and distributions. So we're confident it's going to where it's needed if not enough at the moment.
LAM: And Richard, you spoke of a plane load of water purification tablets. Just how important are these tablets? Are they far more effective than say distributing drinking water?
BRIDLE: Well, the water purification tablets, what you do is you take whatever water you have got and you make sure that that water is safe. They are good for small quanities of water. What we are moving on to next is water treatment plants, so that you have got a point of distribution of larger quantities of water. It's all the stuff that the Oxfam regional director was talking about in the press conference that you have just broadcast.
We also really dearly wish that we had Oxfam alongside side us doing this.
LAM: Time is of the essence of course, and the military government are still slow in admitting aid agencies. Might you consider handing over the supplies to the military?
BRIDLE: At the moment, as I said, we work through the Myanmar Red Cross, that's a long standing arrangement that we have with them. Of course they are connected with the government, but they also have a certain independence of government and we also do have operation conditions that are placed on us by our executive board, by the member states of the United Nations.
LAM: What is the situaiton so far in terms of diseases like diarrhoea and malaria? What can you tell us?
BRIDLE: I think we are still in the stage of clear and present danger. We would rely on the World Health Organisation, WHO to do the disease surveillance. So far, they have not yet announced that there are any epidemics. But in these conditions, we can expect that there would probably be outbreaks of diarrhoeal disease. There might be an increase in malaria. The other disease that we have to be concerned about is dengue fever, which is very contagious and can be very lethal to children.
