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Photo: REUTERS/ StringerCourtesy www.alertnet.org
Survivors of Cyclone Nargis wait for local donors on a road at a destroyed village in the south of central Yangon May 12, 2008. |
In the coming weeks AmeriCares will be supplying and equipping a number of planned emergency clinics in Myanmar, focusing on the areas devastated by Cyclone Nargis. These clinics will replace damaged rural health outposts and serve large populations of displaced persons living in temporary shelters.
In an effort to restore routine health services, AmeriCares will outfit each clinic with basic medical equipment, instruments and essential medicines in collaboration with our partner on the ground. We are also currently coordinating plans to provide an emergency supply of cholera treatments for areas where the drinking water has been compromised by flooding, as well as to re-supply essential aid (including anti-malarials) to the affected regions.
AmeriCares was one of the first nonprofit organizations to deliver aid directly into Myanmar, airlifting more than 15 tons of critically needed medicines and medical supplies to survivors of the cyclone. Our emergency response team made successful arrangements to ensure the distribution of our supplies to the flooded Irrawaddy Delta region.
Within 48 hours the medicines and supplies were in the hands of mobile medical teams that delivered the necessary aid directly to those in need. Each mobile medical team, carrying medicines donated by AmeriCares, sees as many as 100 patients per day.
More than a month after the disaster, there are still an estimated 2.4 million survivors in need of aid. The total number of dead and missing in Myanmar is estimated as at least 130,000.
