Food, supplies reaching survivors, relief workers say

Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) efforts in Myanmar continue despite international claims that the country's government is mishandling the distribution of some outside aid two weeks after a cyclone decimated the nation's coastal regions, an ADRA spokesperson said.

"The shipping and distribution of ADRA emergency supplies and food in Myanmar has not been hampered, despite ... reports that relief aid has been diverted," Julio Munoz, ADRA bureau chief for Marketing and Development, said in a May 19 statement. "All ADRA aid intended for survivors is reaching the target communities," he added.

The humanitarian agency of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is delivering food, clothing, medicine and other relief supplies to survivors of the two-day storm with its partners, including the World Food Program (WFP). ADRA's longstanding presence in the southeast Asian country is facilitating its relief efforts, ADRA officials said.

ADRA staff is working from its headquarters in Yangon with emergency response teams in the hard-hit Irrawaddy Delta to expand the flow of aid, ADRA officials said.

Only 20 percent of some 2.5 million survivors have received even rudimentary aid, the United Nations reported May 18. Steep increases in deaths from starvation and disease continue to concern government and aid agencies.

Official estimates indicate some 78,000 have now died. Another 56,000 remain missing, leading U.N. officials to project the death toll will eventually soar to more than 100,000 in the country of nearly 50 million.