Guardian Global Development

UN calls for aid corridor to Burma

· Air and sea routes could reach cyclone survivors
· Unicef fears child refugees are at risk of trafficking

The United Nations yesterday called for an air bridge or a sea corridor to channel aid on the scale of that for the Indian Ocean tsunami to get desperately needed relief to the Burma cyclone disaster survivors.

Just a fraction of the food and emergency supplies needed for the estimated 1.9 million homeless people has reached the country 11 days after the catastrophe because of the Burmese regime's intransigence.

EU ministers meeting in Brussels urged that all means possible be used to get aid into the country, as the UN warned of a second catastrophe sparked by hunger and disease due to the lack of clean water, food, medical supplies and shelter.

But the World Health Organisation scotched speculation of an outbreak of cholera in cyclone-ravaged areas of the Irrawaddy delta, where bloated corpses and animal carcasses have contaminated flooded areas, even as torrential rainy season downpours continued unabated.

However, cases of diarrhoea, dysentery and skin infections have hit some of those sheltering in the hundreds of crowded makeshift camps, which lack adequate sanitation to cope with the numbers.

The official death toll brought about by Cyclone Nargis rose again last night to 34,273, while the number of missing stood at 27,838. The UN estimates up to 101,000 people may have perished in the cyclone and accompanying storm surge in the Irrawaddy delta.

Aid again trickled into Burma yesterday with the arrival of two US relief flights from Thailand and three Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) planes with 120 tonnes of medical supplies, food, plastic sheeting and water purification equipment.

But at the same time the regime continued to insist it did not need international assistance, increasing restrictions on foreign aid workers already in the country. Armed checkpoints in Rangoon sought to prevent foreigners leaving the city.

International staff working for MSF have been unable to secure permits to travel beyond Rangoon to carry out relief work in the delta. Two hundred Burmese staff are at work there, although in Bogalay, one of the worst-hit places, even they were not allowed beyond the town limits.

The UN said children in the makeshift camps were at risk of trafficking and sexual abuse as orphans and those separated from parents were being forced to live alongside strangers. "We are really concerned about the risk of exploitation and sexual abuse," said Anne-Claire Dufay, of the UN children's agency in Burma. "If they don't have private sleeping spaces it could be an issue."

From scant population data, Unicef estimates that a third of those who died in the cyclone were children. Some camps and surviving villages have large numbers of adults and comparatively few children.

To deliver massive amounts of aid swiftly the UN is working out the logistics of an air bridge with flights from Bangkok taking relief to the delta. A second option is a sea corridor that would comprise a floating warehouse on the Irrawaddy delta coast, with a mother ship offshore and smaller boats to stock the facility and ferry relief to needy communities.

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