Aid Efforts in China Moving Quickly Versus Myanmar

It has been more than three weeks since a cyclone struck Myanmar, killing at least 32,000 people, yet international aid workers are still trying to persuade the government to allow relief workers to entry into the country. That is in sharp contrast to China, where authorities quickly mobilized a massive emergency response to last week’s deadly earthquake.

According to an article by Stevenson Swanson in the Chicago Tribune, aid is still only slowly trickling into Myanmar, as international aid agencies focus on the devastation caused by the cyclone.

“The delivery of aid is improving,” UN spokeswoman Michele Montas told Swanson. “It’s not improving as fast as we would like, or as fast as the situation demands, but it is improving.”

But Swanson says that concern over Myanmar stands in marked contrast to expressions of confidence that China’s government could handle almost all of its own relief effort. Following the earthquake last week, the UN offered assistance to the Chinese government, but Montas told Swanson the Chinese have not asked for anything yet.

A Chinese disaster official said Beijing welcomes funds and supplies, but with thousands of its own troops and other personnel on the scene, it would not accept international aid workers.