IsraAID provides relief in Burma still
The presence of Israeli relief teams is still being felt in Burma, as IsraAID recently dispatched a third team of medical and relief professionals to offer aid to the victims of the May 3 cyclone.
Locals and IsraAID volunteers load the boat that takes them to remote affected areas with relief items. [Photos courtesy of IsraAID]
Cyclone Nargis devastated the Delta region of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. It killed some 78,000 to 130,000 people and left hundreds of thousands vulnerable to disease and starvation.
This prompted the Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid (IsraAID) – an organization that represents 15 NGOs in Israel – to send a small team of doctors, nurses and water specialists to Myanmar just four days after the cyclone hit.
One month later, Israelis are still working in the field to try to help survivors bounce back from the disaster.
In a phone interview from Israel, Shachar Zahavi, the director of IsraAID, said Israeli doctors are in Yangon – Burma’s largest city and former capital, also known as Rangoon – and relief professionals are in a small village called Tar Tipe, which is a four-hour boat ride down the river from Yangon.
IsraAID has already shipped 10 tons of relief supplies, including food, water, mattresses, buckets and clothes to distribute to the survivors.
Zahavi said that many who were left homeless fled from the Delta region to the outskirts of Yangon and built makeshift refugee camps. IsraAID volunteers were able to reach them to distribute basic supplies to them as well.
They have also dispatched medical specialists to train 500 local doctors to deal with large-scale disasters.
“They are not used to dealing with massive natural disasters, so our teams went into a couple of hospitals in Yangon and trained them on how to deal with massive casualties, [sharing] the expertise that our doctors gain in Israel because of suicide bombings,” Zahavi said.
Israeli medical professionals who volunteered with IsraAID in Myanmar led a c