Voices from the Frontline: Dr. Asis Min - Myanmar

Dr. Asis Min is with Médecins Sans Frontières in Bassein, Myanmar. He's leading medical teams through the logistical challenge of helping those in the most devastated region of the country.

Interview date and time: 9 a.m.  (Yangon time) May 12, 2008

I'm in the capital of Irrawaddy division, the worst-hit part of Myanmar. Between 95% and 100% of the houses have been destroyed. One location is in the extreme south western part of Myanmar, where there are a lot of very small islands and small villages on the islands. Many small villages have been completely deserted – there are probably no survivors. Those villages are no longer inhabitable.

In some villages there are only 5 to 10 survivors, who have been transferred to other villages because they can no longer live in their own village. Many people are still unaccounted for. All the boats locally were stranded or destroyed by the cyclone so it is very difficult for us to move from the place where we arrived to the other islands. It's very, very complicated because you can bring people and goods to one part of the island, but inside the island there are many villages where there is no transport. We are carrying sacks or rice, medical kits and plastic sheets (for building temporary shelters) to these villages on motorbikes, the only form of transport available.

So far we have been managing with the supplies we had inside the country. We had operations already running so we could mobilize materials, medicines and food from the existing programme very quickly. So far we are procuring locally, but I guess this will very soon no longer be possible. We have authorization to land a charter from abroad so this will solve a little bit our problem of availability of goods. But that will not solve the problem of reaching quickly the extremely remote places without any infrastructure.

Most of the water sources have been contaminated. We are working on decontaminating the existing wells, but our capacity is very limited because we have not been able to send any materials like big water-bladders with modern decontamination technology. We currently have no means for that type of thing in the field. If we cannot act quickly in water and sanitation, then there is a huge risk of disease outbreaks.

It's a catastrophe that there were no preventive measures taken. The casualties and the damage are very, very high. It's a big catastrophe. What's needed is a quick mobilization in terms of water supply and other sanitation work. In terms of food and shelter, we're going to scale up our distributions in the coming days. At the beginning our supply was limited, so we had to provide food only for two or three days. So we have to go back again to those areas, while at the same time we are reaching new areas.

It's getting better, but I would not say that there is food for everybody, because we have not reached everybody yet. In one of our first intervention areas, there is no other organisation working. There is a small amount or rice provided by the government. But I don't think everybody has food. For the time being we need more emergency response in terms of food distribution, shelter and healthcare. It's a complete abyss. Places are destroyed completely.