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On Friday, May 2, Cyclone Nargis and the 12-foot-high storm surge that followed flooded coastal Myanmar (Burma), leaving up to 100,000 dead and 1 million or more without shelter. Still recovering from the 2004 Christmas tsunami, the military junta in Myanmar was ill equipped to feed, shelter, and care for the storm's countless victims.

But as of May 9, the Myanmar government had refused to allow relief workers to enter the country to distribute aid. Such emergency food and medical aid is at risk of falling into the wrong hands or being resold on the black market. The government, according to reliable reports, had confiscated planes full of emergency rations from the U.N. World Food Program.

As of late Friday night local time, U.N. officials and Myanmar government leaders made progress in negotiations, and two flights of food were expected to arrive on Saturday. Myanmar has 51 million residents, many of whom live on less than $2 per day, the global poverty line.

Relief teams from major Christian organizations and other international agencies are in nearby Bangkok, Thailand, awaiting the government's approval of visas.

From Bangkok, Laura Blank, an emergency communications officer for World Vision, spoke on Friday, May 9, to Stan Guthrie, CT managing editor of special projects.

What is World Vision currently trying to do to help the situation?

As soon as the storm ended, we were able to begin distributing rice, clean water, fuel, rebuilding supplies, and blankets—the basic things that we wanted to get to people as soon as we could. Because we'd been there for so long, we were able to purchase goods locally and in bulk, and try to start some of the relief efforts on a very small scale.

How many people do you have in country right now?

We have close to 600 staff in country. We're hearing from our staff that close to 2 million people have been affected in one way or another by the storm.

This morning one of our staffers shared stories that she's heard from the field of little children being washed away and parents having to watch their children die in front of their eyes, or of children having to see a family member pass away. It's hard to imagine what that does to a little child who may become an orphan. So what we really want to do, and what our staff are doing, is to try to identify those children and make sure that they don't get lost, that they're cared for and have food and have someone who can love them and help them walk through this.

We've heard much about bottlenecks and other problems. What's been World Vision's experience?

We've been able to be in the country for 40 years now, and certainly the government asking for international aid as soon as the storm was over was an encouraging sign.

Right now what we're trying to do is to continue encouraging an expansion of the relief process, because every day that we lose is another day people aren't getting the aid they need.

There's an incredible lack of clean water. Particularly in the delta, where the country was hit the hardest, there really is no clean water to speak of, and what's replaced it is pools of stagnant water, water with bodies and animal corpses floating in it that's incredibly contaminated.

What people are doing without the option of clean water is just taking a risk and drinking that, and that leads to some high public health risks, too, because you've got people, hundreds of thousands of people, who now have no homes.

What we're seeing is hundreds of thousands of people in these internally displaced people camps, or IDP camps. They're overcrowded, too. So when one person gets sick, it beomes a breeding ground for disease.

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May (Web-only) 2008, Vol. 52