Myanmar’s gov­ern­ment has decided to stop flights into the Ayeyarwady Delta for aid to the vic­tims of Cyclone Nar­gis. The flights took only an hour, now it will take aid work­ers a lot longer to get sup­plies to the cyclone vic­tims. Cyclone Nar­gis killed 140,000 in Myanmar.

From the IRIN, we read more about the impact this deci­sion makes on aid.

“It is back to six-hour-long road trips or boat rides,” grum­bled an aid worker.

Chris Kaye, WFP coun­try direc­tor, con­firmed that the ser­vice had been dis­con­tin­ued. The agency had started off with a fleet of 10 heli­copters after Cyclone Nar­gis struck Myan­mar on 2 and 3 May 2008. The ser­vice deliv­ered 1,119MT of life-saving sup­plies, includ­ing food and shel­ter mate­ri­als, and trans­ported thou­sands of aid work­ers and peo­ple need­ing urgent assistance.

The oper­a­tion was reduced to a sin­gle heli­copter in recent months but con­tin­ued to pro­vide crit­i­cal access to the delta not only for WFP but the entire human­i­tar­ian com­mu­nity as roads are often inac­ces­si­ble after rains.

“The ser­vice was a great con­ve­nience also for gov­ern­ment offi­cials and donors con­duct­ing assess­ments of the var­i­ous post-Nargis pro­grammes,” said Thierry Del­breuve, head of the UN Office for the Coor­di­na­tion of Human­i­tar­ian Affairs in Myanmar.

Last night PBS aired a pro­gram about the plight of the sur­vivors of the cyclone. The show Wide Angle focused on orphans who now have to take care of them­selves. The below video is an intro­duc­tion to the show.

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