BANGKOK, Thailand – Military authorities in Burma have agreed to let 160 aid workers from four Asian countries assist its struggling cyclone relief effort, aid officials said Wednesday, the government’s first acknowledgment that it needs foreign expertise.
Thailand’s public health ministry confirmed that Friday it is sending 30 doctors, along with medical supplies, to work for two weeks in Burma, also known as Myanmar. U.N. officials said India, China and Bangladesh also have been asked to send experienced disaster relief teams.
The news came as five more U.S. military C-130 transport planes, carrying such desperately needed supplies as water, mosquito nets, plastic sheets, blankets and hygiene kits, flew into Burma’s largest city, Rangoon, in an acceleration of U.S. assistance after the May 3 cyclone.
The United Nations noted other “progress” as it tried to get aid to the worst-hit areas in the Irrawaddy Delta. Long-awaited visas for some U.N. disaster relief and logistics experts have come through.
“We are seeing more flights into the country, more supplies getting into the delta,” said Amanda Pitt, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “But the levels of aid getting in are not adequate . . . They are not at a level and speed commensurate with what is needed.”
Burma’s military junta is highly wary of foreigners, especially Westerners. It is under intense pressure to open the doors to a full-scale international relief operation. The United Nations has said that as many as 2.5 million people have been severely affected by the cyclone.
In a briefing Wednesday in Washington, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Henrietta Fore, acknowledged that U.S. officials have no idea whether the limited aid the United States has been able to fly into Burma actually has been delivered to victims of the cyclone or whether it has been diverted by the military.
“We will try to do on-the-ground assessments,” Fore said. “But at this time the needs are so immense, they are so large that we’re taking some risks to hope that we can get the assistance through to the ones who are most in need.”
The advocacy group Human Rights Watch reported that supplies delivered by a U.S. C-130 aircraft Monday were unloaded by men wearing the shirts of the Union Solidarity and Development Association, a paramilitary organization that was implicated in the attempted murder of opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
In recent days, survivors have endured new rains. A storm was forming in the seas off Burma on Wednesday, but the U.N. weather agency discounted fears that it could evolve into a new cyclone.
U.N. agencies continue to press Burma for clearance to use helicopters, more boats and trucks to ferry supplies piling up at the airport in Rangoon, also known as Yangon. Many remote areas in the Irrawaddy Delta have yet to receive any relief.
