Reuters Posted online: Monday, January 03, 2005 at 1522 hours IST
Banda Aceh, Indonesia, January 3: Eight days on, hungry and sick survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami are waiting for food and medicine in growing desperation as a multinational aid operation tries to reach remote towns ravaged by the waves.
The United Nations said 1.8 million survivors needed food -- but that the world's response in money and resources gave grounds for hope -- as dehydration, disease and hunger threaten to add to a disaster that has claimed at least 144,000 lives.
Tropical rains in Indonesia's northern Aceh province, with more than half of the known dead, and flooding in Sri Lanka have compounded the misery for survivors and created more problems for troops and aid workers trying to deliver relief.
South Asian airports groaned under the weight of hundreds of flights carrying medicines, food and shelter as the world's biggest relief operation since World War Two, backed by $2 billion in government pledges, stepped into high gear.
On Sunday, World Bank President James Wolfensohn said his agency could double or triple the $250 million it has promised for regional reconstruction, and would also be looking at debt relief for the poor nations worst affected by the disaster. Canada doubled its government aid contribution to $67 million.
"The world is really coming together here in a way that we probably have never seen before," UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said in New York.
"Overall I am more optimistic today than I was yesterday, and especially the day before yesterday, that the global community will be able to face up to this enormous challenge," Egeland said.
"The international system is working." Money has yet to overcome the logistical nightmare of distributing the aid, especially to remote parts of Aceh on Sumatra island where roads and airstrips have been washed away.
Helicopters from the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln began dropping boxes of food and bottled water around the shattered city of Banda Aceh on Sunday. Wild scenes in some places meant the deliveries had to be aborted. Egeland said relief teams hoped to reach all of the estimated 700,000 hungry in Sri Lanka within three more days, but that it could take longer before enough food aid gets to nearly 1 million in need in hard-to-reach parts of Indonesia, where the known death toll has topped 94,000.
India's toll of dead and feared dead neared 15,000. Tempers flared in the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, where outside access was still being restricted while hundreds of bodies lay decomposing in the sun. However, affected nations, working with international aid agencies, private relief groups and donor governments, are easing some early bottlenecks and improving their capacity to get in goods on a daily basis to serve the estimated 5 million people requiring some form of aid.
Logistics centres are up and running in Rome, Jakarta and Sumatra, and a command-and-control centre set up at the U-Tapao military air base in Thailand is coordinating the many civil and military flights involved in the relief effort, Egeland said.
TRANSLATING MONEY INTO RELIEF
Australia, Britain, Germany, India, Pakistan, Singapore and the United States are among governments providing civil or military aircraft, which were invaluable in quickly translating aid contributions into actual assistance on the ground.
Germany army colonel Jurgen Canders arrived in Banda Aceh on Monday with a nine-member medical unit. He said the team included tropical disease and public health specialists, and its mobile capability would allow them to conduct surgery in remote areas.
Flight Lieutenant Harvey Reynolds of the Royal Australian Air Force said a giant Antonov transport carrying at least three Australian helicopters was due to land. The choppers would begin running aid down Aceh's devastated west coast.
Reynolds said Australia already had four Hercules transports flying up to 10 flights a day into Banda Aceh from Medan, capital of North Sumatra.
Topping the list of needs on a regional level was water and sanitation equipment to head off expected outbreaks of water-borne infections, spread through tainted community water supplies.
In Indonesia, UNICEF has said reports are coming in of children starting to die of pneumonia. UN health officials say disease could kill maybe 50,000. More than 100,000 people are living in temporary shelters and camps in Indonesia alone, many suffering from diarrhoea, fever, respiratory infections, headaches and stomach problems.
The United States has sent 1,500 troops to help in Sri Lanka, which lost 30,000 citizens. One US Senator said it may eventually spend billions of dollars helping Asia recover.
Secretary of State Colin Powell and President George W. Bush's brother Jeb are headed to the region on Monday to help assess reconstruction needs. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is due in Indonesia on Thursday, where he is expected to appeal for more relief at a world aid conference.
Forty countries lost nationals in addition to the 13 directly hit. Around half of the 5,000 killed in Thailand were foreign tourists. Among European nations, Sweden suffered the greatest loss, although it cut the estimated number of missing citizens by about a fifth on Sunday to 2,915, with 52 confirmed dead.
Many recovered bodies are awaiting DNA analysis for identification, while others, washed out to sea, may never be recovered. (For more news on
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