Word: ngos
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...devastated the Irrawaddy Delta, precious little aid is reaching the storm's victims. On Friday, in village after village, residents told me no aid at all had arrived. Blackened, bloated corpses still bobbed in rivers. Many storm survivors had no idea when they would be eating their next meal. NGOs began reporting outbreaks of diarrheal disease. By contrast, in other disaster sites like India or Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami, convoys of trucks, laden with both domestic and foreign supplies, swarmed the area within days. Perhaps Burma's generals could have been excused for the delay-after all, this...
...standing on the back of the truck had another message as well: free transportation in trucks would be provided to villagers who didn't live within walking distance of the nearest polling station. Imagine if those trucks had been redeployed instead for the cyclone relief effort. Or if foreign NGOs were given permission to enter the country and coordinate aid work-something that is happening at a glacial pace. One of the few foreign shipments allowed in was quickly relabeled to say that the goods had been donated courtesy of the junta. "With each passing day, we come closer...
...Indonesian province of Aceh, where the 2004 tsunami galvanized warring factions to lay down their arms. But Burma's seclusion is more akin to that of North Korea, a country that gulps down foreign aid without reciprocal political concessions. And corruption is so rampant in Burma that NGOs worry about how much aid will actually reach the neediest victims. "One side of me wants to hope for openness," says Khin Omar, a Burmese former student activist who lives in exile in Thailand. "But the other side knows the regime is smart enough to let in aid and then close...
...paranoid are members of the junta about any outside influence that in recent years they have severely curtailed movements by foreign aid groups, forcing several organizations, including the International Committee for the Red Cross and the French arm of Doctors Without Borders, to abandon their field offices. While some NGOs reported that their foreign workers were being granted special visas by the military to help with reconstruction efforts, the previous NGO blackout means that little infrastructure exists to help get supplies to the needy quickly...
...good news is that the current Indian government seems to get it. "Health is slowly becoming an important focus," says Krishna Rao, who heads health economics and funding for the Public Health Foundation of India. The organization was set up in 2006 by the government, NGOs like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and private health providers to influence policy and research, and to set up world-class public-health schools around the country. The government has also promised more money for rural health through its ambitious National Rural Health Mission. The Congress Party, which leads India's coalition government...