- Lots of structures damaged, many people in the streets are not willing to go back into damaged buildings, everyone looking for basic items such as water, latrines. Many spending the night in monasteries.
- Limited electricity in the city, very difficult to get a grasp of the situation at night
- MSF teams in Mandalay felt 3 small aftershocks on Monday 31 03, no subsequent damages recorded though.
- Right now, we still don’t have the full picture. More concrete information from the assessment teams will come throughout the next days, but MSF is focussed mostly on understanding the need for emergency trauma care within the existing heath system for life and limb saving surgeries for crush injuries due to building collapses, what hospitals are functioning and not functioning and where support is needed. Also, crucially, what the water and sanitation situation is.
- The ability to deploy assessment teams and, ideally, emergency trauma care, are critical in the first hours and days after any earthquake if we hope to respond with life and limb-saving surgical care for people injured and to assess what other medical and humanitarian priority assistance is needed.
We are actively mobilising our resources on this crisis and in communication with the relevant authorities: Our medical humanitarian staff in Myanmar and neighbouring countries are preparing to respond at scale to the needs of affected communities. Communication is on-going with all relevant stakeholders, including the Ministry of Health, reaffirming our commitment and capacity to scale up quickly and support on-going response efforts in Mandalay and Naypyitaw, and all other areas impacted.
As the scale of destruction is becoming clearer, a massive scale up of assistance to prevent further loss of life and suffering is urgently needed: An emergency of this scale is beyond the capacity of any one organization to respond to. While much of the visuals and information emerging demonstrate impacts in urban areas (Mandalay etc), communities in more remote areas may struggle since their needs are not quickly known and it will take time for assistance to reach them. All people impacted by the earthquake no matter where they live need access to life-saving medical humanitarian assistance.
