Two planes carrying aid, organised by the Bangladesh Army, were sent to Myanmar on 8 May 2008. Correspondence on this article should be sent to: Fiona.campbell@merlin.org.uk. by Fiona Campbell, Muhammad Shafique and Paula Sansom, Merlin December 2008. Mobile teams deployed from Laputta to the villages reported that communities were immediately assisted by their CHWs using the basic skills and supplies they had to hand. While a number of donors and NGOs are increasingly viewing this area as an important aspect of work, more needs to be done to actively promote this, especially with the predicted increase in disasters in the future. However, even for these agencies the movement of international staff was restricted, highlighting once again the importance of local response. Bangladesh, which has had experience with cyclones in the past, was one of the first countries to supply aid to Myanmar in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. Nargis set many records for its death toll and its damage. There were problems in recruiting experienced staff: only two senior doctors could be recruited in-country and the majority were recently qualified without the level of experience with which Merlin usually works. [44], Myanmar's military leaders did not count the full death toll from Nargis (leaving the area shortly after it hit), and this led to initial uncertainty about the scale of the disaster. [156] The Myanmar government estimated losses of US$10 billion because of the cyclone. Hungarian Baptist Aid has joined to Baptist World Aid's Search, Rescue and Medical team. The report also indicated that the military was horse-trading aid for physical labour. Given the restrictions on travel outside Laputta, remote management approaches were needed, in terms of the coordination of national staff and community partnership arrangements. Larkin, Emma (2010). [82], Trocaire has been active in Myanmar since 1995 and were the first Irish aid agency to gain access after Cyclone Nargis. The biggest challenge was obtaining visas for entry into the country. At one point, Nargis was a Category 4 cyclone, with sustained winds of 210 kilometers per hour (130 miles per hour), according to Unisys Weather.. to the south. From 12 to 20 May, USAID and the US Department of Defense (DOD) coordinated the delivery of nearly $1.2 million of US relief commodities to Rangoon on 185 DOD C-130 flights. Mingalar Foundation, a Myanmar-based NGO, is helping 37,000+ unreached people (about 7,000 families) in 9 affected areas everyday by distributing food, clean water, shelter and medicine and are accepting donations online with the help of Samui Island Hotels (USA/Thailand). The Merlin Response Team (MRT) arrived in the country a week after the cyclone. Andrew Kirkwood, country director of the British charity Save The Children, stated: "We're looking at 50,000 dead and millions of homeless, I'd characterise it as unprecedented in the history of Myanmar and on an order of magnitude with the effect of the [2004] tsunami on individual countries. Cyclone Nargis struck Burma on 3 May 2008. Samak Sundaravej stated that "if Myanmar gives the green light allowing us to help, our Air Force will provide C-130 aircraft to carry our teams there. [78] The federation had also launched an appeal of a further CHF73.9 million. These political tensions raised the concern that some food and medical supplies might become unusable, even before the Burmese junta officially accepted the international relief effort. Nargis posed 48 hours before it hit the country's coast. Everything is Broken: the Untold Story of Disaster under Burma's Military Regime.