THE threat of disease still hangs over the storm-affected areas of Ayeyarwady Division but cyclone victims who have received aid are in surprisingly good health, according to World Vision International President Dean Hirsch.

“I would say, at this point, the children in particular have been pretty resilient,” Mr Hirsch said after visiting World Vision relief areas in Bogale and Junio Island late last week. “In a typical disaster like this you would expect to find more serious illness already.”

“When we went out to the project itself, we did not generally find the normal coughing and wheezing, you didn’t have kids who already have dysentery,” Mr Hirsch told The Myanmar Times in an exclusive interview.

“This doesn’t mean illness is not coming, it doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be problems. We had a natural disaster – but with World Vision, CARE, MSF and Save the Children down in the delta, I think we can prevent a manmade disaster.”

“The highest priority for me right now is we need to pay attention to the health. The issue of clean water is a critical. Water systems have been contaminated and World Vision is working on fixing this problem.”

World Vision, which has 562 national staff, is supplying aid relief to approximately 300,000 people in Ayeyarwady Division but expects to reach up to 750,000 storm victims.

While the recent monsoon rains have provided some clean water – previously a major headache for NGOs – it has also caused problems because of a lack of adequate shelter.

“It’s obviously a blessing there’s rain, so they’re getting clean water but at some point the systems will break down and that’s what we have to pay attention to,” he said, adding that malaria will also become more of an issue as monsoon rains accumulate.

“Out in the area we went – it might not be true everywhere – the people are living on top of water. They’re building, rebuilding on top of water. But I’ve been assured that we have enough mosquito nets for everyone so that’s critical to stop malaria.”

Transportation and logistics have also been a problem, not just for World Vision but all organisations involved in the relief effort, and this was raised in Mr Hirsch’s meeting with government officials on his three-day visit to Myanmar last week.

“I met with the Minister for Social Welfare and Resettlement, Major General Maung Maung Swe, and his main request to me was there was a need for tarpaulins and that was evidenced yesterday in my visit.”

“We’ve got 55,000 tarpaulins but we need to get them out – in the area that we’ve been working, no tarpaulins have made it and we need to move them there immediately for these people. This is our responsibility.”

“Logistics in any relief setting is difficult,” he said. “But I’ve asked the government to find a way to work on the checkpoints; if we could have one checkpoint that does a thorough screening and then allow the vehicles to proceed without have to be screened at all other checkpoints we could save a lot of time.”

Dr Susu Thatun, World Vision’s senior policy advisor for child protection and trafficking, also met with the Maj Gen Maung Maung Swe and said the government welcomed “further collaboration with the NGOs and other partners because obviously the government is in a position where going it alone is not going to be sufficient”.

Dr Susu Thatun said the collaboration had been particularly effective for preventing human trafficking.

“Currently there is no evidence of any human trafficking but we’re not going to be reactive, in terms of waiting for the problem to develop. World Vision has been very involved with the government in addressing human trafficking and taking preventative measures,” she said.

World Vision and the other organisations in the child protection cluster have been working particularly on family tracing. Mr Hirsch says the organisation learnt the importance of family tracing from working in Indonesia’s Aceh province following the 2004 tsunami.

“In Aceh, if parents had died we would try to find extended family. That’s part of preventing trafficking, not to allow any child to go unnoticed or to be left on their own,” he said. “This is one area where I do compliment the government. A lot of effort is going into fighting human trafficking and, in a critical relief effort like this children, who have lost their parents, you want to make sure you’re vigilant in protecting them.”

But he said protection did not mean institutionalising children in orphanages.
“We have a responsibility to speak with the government and say there are alternatives to orphanages,” Mr Hirsch said. “I think there should be some good discussions with those making the decisions where we say, ‘There are some alternative methods in the orphan philosophy. But first, lets find the extended families if we can.’”