At least 800,000 people are in need of emergency aid in Myanmar following Cyclone Mocha.
Yangon, Myanmar:
The United Nations said on Friday that at least 800,000 people in Myanmar are in need of emergency food aid and other assistance after Cyclone Mocha battered the conflict-torn country earlier this week.
Mocha brought heavy rain and winds up to 195 kilometers (120 miles) per hour across Myanmar and neighboring Bangladesh on Sunday, with Myanmar’s junta saying 145 people were killed and media reports putting the number far higher.
The United Nations’ World Food Program described “scars of devastation” in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, a region that is home to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who live in displacement camps after decades of ethnic conflict.
Anthea Webb, WFP’s deputy regional director for Asia and the Pacific, told reporters in Geneva that the cyclone “flattened homes, uprooted trees cut off roads, destroyed hospitals and schools and severely damaged telecommunications and power lines”. severely disrupted.” Bangkok.
“At least 800,000 people are in urgent need of emergency food assistance,” he said, adding that “greater need for food, shelter, water, health and other humanitarian assistance is expected to appear as we reach more areas.” “
He said that while Bangladesh escaped direct attack, “about half a million Bangladeshis and thousands of Rohingya refugees have lost their homes and properties.”
Webb said WFP began its response to Mocha before the storm hit, reaching 28,000 people in Bangladesh near the Myanmar border with advance cash aid to help them prepare.
And, she said, as soon as the worst of the storm passed, the agency had reached thousands of refugees with emergency food aid, and was working “around the clock” to resume its regular food support.
In Myanmar, WFP launched emergency food distribution to families in evacuation shelters in Rakhine state and neighboring Magway region.
That said, the agency aims to reach at least 800,000 people in the worst-affected areas of Rakhine, Magway and Chin – about half of them already displaced by the conflict – for the initial three months.
“The needs are enormous in both countries,” Webb said.
She explained that a lack of funds forced WFP in March to reduce the value of meal vouchers for refugees living in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh to just 10 US cents per meal.
“And we will have to reduce it again in June, unless funding is secured,” he said, adding that WFP urgently needed $56 million by the end of the year to help Rohingya refugees.
Meanwhile, in Myanmar, the UN agency needs $60 million to provide emergency aid to 2.1 million internally displaced and vulnerable people, including the 800,000 hit by Mocha, she said.
“The cyclone has made the situation even worse for millions of people already struggling to cope in extremely uncertain circumstances.”
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