Labutta/Cologne. "By now, we have treated the first cholera patients," Malteser International staff members report from the hardly affected coastal town in the Irrawaddy Delta. Since the cyclone hit the region, the people here in Labutta could only drink water from wells that have been spoilt and heavily polluted by the flood wave."

In order to reach as many survivors as possible in the disaster region, Malteser International has sent out three mobile clinics to the Delta. About 50 staff members - of the total of mean-while around 200 staff working for Malteser International in Myanmar - are providing relief in the disaster region nearly round the clock. The top priority besides medical care now is to secure the access to safe drinking water and sanitation. Malteser International is going to provide rainwater harvesting tanks for the 8,000 internally displaced people in the biggest camp in a monastery in Labutta (Lay Htat Kyaung). Furthermore, the water is sanitized with chlorine. In addition, Malteser International in cooperation with Unicef will set up 100 latrines in this camp. In total, Malteser International provides help for about 50,000 survivors of the cyclone in the Irrawaddy Delta and in Yangon.

Today and during the weekend, the organisation will send further relief supplies to Labutta. A convoy will bring the three "Emergency Health Kits" to the Delta. They arrived in Yangon yesterday with a plane of the German Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW) with logis-tical assistance by the World Food Programme. With the antibiotics, dressing material, pain killers and further medicines contained in these Kits, Malteser International is able to take care of 30,000 survivors for three months. A further transport also left for Yangon from the Malteser International project site in the Wa Special Region II in the north of the country. "Staff members in the north of Myanmar want to support the people in the disaster area and provide dispensable medicines from their warehouse for the survivors of the disaster," Roland Hansen, Head of the Asia Desk of Malteser International, reports.

The work of Malteser International is supported by the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, by Caritas and by the German association "Schwerte Hilft e.V.". As Malteser International has been able to start the relief activities in the disaster area right after the Cyclone, they are now also bundling the assistance of other organisations and partners and implementing it.

For the continuation and the extension of its work, the organisation is in urgent need of donations!

To support the work of Malteser International in Myanmar, please transfer your donations to:

Donation Account 120 120 120 Bank für Sozialwirtschaft, Wörthstr. 15 - 17, D-50668 Köln Sort Code : 370 205 00 IBAN : DE49 3702 0500 0001 0258 01 BIC: BFSWDE33XXX Reference : "Cyclone Nargis"

Attention editorial offices: Ingo Radtke, Secretary General of Malteser International, and Roland Hansen, Head of the Asia Desk of Malteser International, are available for interviews. Please contact: +49 - 221 9822-213.

Recent photos of the relief activities in Myanmar can be downloaded under: http://php.malteser.de/cpg133/thumbnails.php?album=198&page=1