Burma junta hiding real death toll from aid agencies, says UN

BURMA’S military leaders were accused yesterday of deliberately keeping the full plight of suffering cyclone survivors from aid agencies.

The United Nations said that severe restrictions by the junta meant the agencies lacked the most basic information, from the number of orphans to the extent of diseases and the number of refugee camps.

They could also not say whether all survivors were in camps, on the move or still living in destroyed villages in the hardest-hit Irrawaddy delta, an area the size of Austria.

“The risk increases with each passing day,” said a spokeswoman, referring to the vulnerability of survivors to outbreaks of disease and other problems.

Even the death toll has not been confirmed.

“Everyone is still using a range of figures because we don’t have data yet. Access is making that difficult ... We simply don’t have the information, and I can’t say when we will have it,” said Steve Marshall, a UN official.

John Holmes, UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, will travel to Burma today to try to convince junta leaders to grant more access for UN relief workers and massively scale up aid efforts.

The government yesterday announced the official death toll had soared to 78,000 with nearly 56,000 missing. For most of the past week the number of dead had remained about 28,000.

The Red Cross fears the toll may be as high as 133,000; the UN estimates more than 100,000 died.

In the absence of a clear picture, the UN estimates some 1.5 million to 2.5 million survivors are in desperate need of food, water, shelter and medical care.

Aid groups have reached only 270,000 so far.

The World Health Organisation said it had recorded the first cases of cholera.

The junta insists Burma nationals and government agencies, including the military, can handle relief operations

“We still have obstacles to relief workers getting to the delta region, which doesn’t help,” the UN spokeswoman said. “We are concerned about the effects on the people. It is clear, from what everyone is saying, the aid effort is far from over.”

Charities said figures from the worst-affected villages showed as many as 90% of the deaths were women, children and the elderly.

“Our figures in the camps show a lot of adults, but very few children and very few elderly,” said Brian Agland, CARE International’s country director in Burma.

“The worst-case scenario is that a lot of children may have drowned. In one village there were 500 survivors and they were all adults.”