With reports of starvation and growing health problems, the news from Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta is grim. No question, the paranoid junta leadership has stymied the relief effort, at the expense of over 2.4 million people. Half of those affected by the devastating cyclone and tidal wave remain without basic needs – food, shelter and clothing one month after the winds have died down.

In villages from eastern Laputta in the heart of the Delta where over 50% of the people died, to the villages in southern tip of the Yangon township, the eyes of those affected continue to glaze over with shock and tears, as the psychological recovery of loss of family, friends and their foundations of lives has set in.