20 April 2009
Cyclone Nargis: one year on
Watch our short film about Daw San Yee, and find out how, with DFID support, the NGO Merlin helped her to recover.
Weathering the storm
Bodies lay strewn across the flattened landscape. In the worst hit places, not even remnants of houses were visible. “The village looked like a cemetery,” says Win Teingi, a young teacher from Ye-Dwin-Gone in the eastern delta. “Everything was quiet. No one knew what to do”.
Win Teingi, 20, is a survivor of the terrible cyclone which struck Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta on May 2 2008, killing 140,000 people and leaving millions more bereaved and displaced. Some 450,000 houses were destroyed including 60% of schools and 75% of health facilities.
One year on, after Nargis swept away loved ones, destroyed homes and flooded paddy fields with salt water, people are still rebuilding their lives – with resilience, hard work and help from the international community.
The UK has been one of the largest donors to the relief effort. Its £45 million contribution has helped more than a million survivors and has helped to show that aid can be delivered effectively in Burma.
HelpAge International were one of the DFID-funded organisations on the scene after the cyclone. A mobile medical clinic came to the village and field workers distributed rice, salt and vegetable oil. “Had it not been for the quick assistance of HelpAge, I would not have survived,” said villager Daw Pu Tin.
Read her story: After the Cyclone - Supporting Burma’s elderly poor.