Due to its long term presence in Myanmar AZG was able to respond quickly after Nargis struck Myanmar. Operations started on the 5th of May (Yangon Division) and 6th of May (Ayawaddy Division; Ngapudaw and Laputta).

AZG sent 250 national staff from the large existing programmes in Myanmar and used the medical reserves that were already present in the country.

In the first weeks AZG sent out 8 distribution teams to ensure the distribution of food (rice, oil, fish, beans) and non-food items (sheeting, bed nets, blankets, toolkits) and 8 watsan teams to clean up ponds and wells. Distribution was executed at household level, ensuring that all recipients did acquire the necessary items. AZG sent also 28 mobile medical teams to conduct medical consultations, set up feeding centers for malnutrition and opened 8 fixed clinics in the Ngapudaw and Laputta townships.

By Adrian Mack

Maybe they should call her Cyclone Nina. When she sits down for a chat with the Asian Pacific Post at a Kitsilano diner, Nina Cassils’ first act is to start dispensing gifts, like a hand-woven basket from the Rawang community in Burma-Myanmar’s Kachin State, along with a rapid-fire history lesson of the region. All this while simultaneously gushing over the Madonna concert she’d attended with a bunch of girlfriends the night before at BC Place.

The youthful-looking 54 year-old is warm, open, and super-kinetic. She leaps from topic-to-topic without pause, sometimes tripping over her words in the rush to communicate as much information as she can.
When she empties her bag on the table in front of her, it’s a messy snapshot of the work that Cassils and her husband Dr. John Cassils are currently engaged in – along with their friends Susan and Wieland Wettstein – on behalf of their Cassils Wettstein Asia Fund. The Fund has spent the last 10 years improving the lives of indigent children and families in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Burma-Myanmar, throwing its energies behind libraries, orphanages, schools, hospitals, and other relief efforts.

To date, over $3 million has been raised in direct aid benefiting hundreds – if not thousands – of children and their impoverished families. There’s a handsome spiro-bound booklet produced for potential donors to a pediatric hospital in Angkor, Cambodia – a “ten-year dream,” in Nina’s words. There’s a brochure about the Moo Baa Dek orphanage in Thailand. “We’ve been with them for 10 years,” she says. “There’s about 150 children here and it’s actually become so large it’s its own village. It’s neat.”

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The combined efforts of Metta Development Foundation, AZG, Save the Children Myanmar and MFH & Medical Relief Society Hospital.

AZG (Medicine Sans Frontieres – Holland), in fortunate position, because could divert national staff from the large existing programmes in Myanmar (over 1,000 staff) and could use the large medical reserves they had in country. In the early weeks have reached 200,000 people, have moved 200+ staff into the fields along with 9 international aid workers. In the first week 40 trucks were sent with goods to Delta, 10 boats are distributing goods and staff further south. Two cargo planes flew into Yangon airport with medical supply, mosquito nets, and water and sanitation equipment, including water treatment kits that produce 10,000 liters of drinking water per hour, 30,000 liters water bladders and other materials. 2 more planes followed. AZG has planned 8 million USD for the activities in the initial 3 months

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