WATERY WASTELAND: A shattered house and a small temple lie submerged in a flooded rice field near Yangon after a powerful cyclone battered Myanmar over the weekend. Displaced victims are seeking shelter at schools and monasteries in many of the stricken areas while awaiting the delivery of relief supplies. -- PHOTO: AP

But aid agencies continue to face enormous challenges in getting basic relief supplies to marooned communities in the delta region south of the former capital.

Speaking to The Straits Times over the phone from Yangon, Save the Children UK's country director for Myanmar Andrew Kirkwood said visas for foreign aid workers were less essential than the supplies themselves.

'If aid doesn't get in soon, the death toll will be higher. Fresh water and food must get to the areas within days,' he warned.

Save the Children's 500 staff members were struggling to deliver essential supplies - mainly rice and fresh water - across the stricken delta.

The aid agency is one of a dozen or so already working inside Myanmar, including around 10 United Nations bodies and other non-governmental organisations like World Vision.

LONG-TERM RELIEF NEEDED 'Our focus is on immediate needs, but it is clear now that the relief effort will have to be sustained over years, not months.' SAVE THE CHILDREN UK'S COUNTRY DIRECTOR FOR MYANMAR ANDREW KIRKWOOD ... more

World Vision has delivered 35 tonnes of food, blankets, water, fuel and clothes in areas around Yangon, the agency's spokesman James East told The Straits Times.

Mr Kirkwood said food supplies were being bought locally. The local rice traders' association have cooperated by maintaining prices at pre-cyclone levels.

But the cost of fuel in the black market has gone up four times. Queues of more than 1km have formed at the city's petrol stations, which under the rationing system, provide only nine litres a day at controlled prices.

The cost of hiring a single boat to deliver fresh water in the delta area was around US$2,500 (S$3,400), Mr Kirkwood said.

'In Yangon, operations are going reasonably well, logistics are manageable and we have been able to get trucks to affected areas' distributing rice, salt, sugar, dhal and cooking oil, he said.

In many areas, schools and monasteries were being used as shelters to house hundreds of the homeless or displaced, many of them children under 12 who remained traumatised, he said.

Separately, a school in Yangon that has launched its own relief operation said 800 people were camped in a Hindu temple with poor sanitation, diminishing fresh water supplies and only rice porridge to eat for two days.

In an e-mail message to The Straits Times, it described school after school sheltering hundreds of the homeless - who were, in one place, being 'threatened by a local army guy who said they could not stay there long'.

It added: 'Further on (was) a village of people with no shelter, a foot of flood water in each more or less roofless house and no water.'

Mr Kirkwood said: 'The military has been obvious since Sunday in and around Yangon, moving trees, opening roads and restoring power lines.'

Sixteen military helicopters at Yangon airport were ferrying supplies received from China, India, Thailand, Singapore, Bangladesh, Laos and Indonesia, directly to the delta area.

The offices of the UN in Yangon have been coordinating with government ministries and relief agencies. 'Cluster' groups set up to run the relief effort meet every couple of days.

'Information on where the gaps are is coming out, and we are trying to fill those gaps,' said Mr Kirkwood.

Aid agencies - and the government as well - are extremely worried about epidemics.

Mr Kirkwood noted that at the best of times, 40,000 odd children die of diarrhoea in Myanmar every year; decomposing corpses and animals littering water bodies across the delta now make the threat acute.

Hundreds of thousands of survivors have yet to be reached.

In-field teams deployed by NGOs have no way of communicating from the delta region; satellite phones are not allowed by the ruling military junta.

One hospital in Pathein town, south-east of Yangon, was 'overwhelmed' and another in Ngapudaw further south had been totally destroyed, he said.

The impact on children, who comprise some 40 per cent of the population of the delta, has been especially severe. It is estimated that more than 3,100 primary schools have been destroyed.

'Our focus is on immediate needs, but it is clear now that the relief effort will have to be sustained over years, not months,' Mr Kirkwood said.

nirmal@sph.com.sg