Aid workers face daunting task

By Adam Blenford
BBC News

The urgent need for clean water, health care, food and shelter for the millions left destitute by the Asian tsunami is becoming clearer.

Hundreds of thousands need emergency food and water supplies

Disparate countries scattered across a vast ocean require expertly tailored aid packages if death and disease are to be minimised.

But the task poses unfamiliar challenges, even for aid agencies, governments and international organisations well versed in the language of disaster.

Few, if any, of the key agencies have a full understanding of how many people need how much help and for how long.

Even Jan Egeland, the UN's humanitarian relief co-ordinator, has admitted the international relief effort needs several days to find its feet.

'We have to act soon'

The World Food Programme, a UN agency and the world's largest supplier of emergency food aid, had 4,000 tons of rice, wheat and lentils stored in Sri Lanka, a legacy of the long-running civil war on the island.

Two days after the tsunami hit, 12 trucks carrying hundreds of tons of food were despatched to the devastated south coast area.

DIFFICULT LOCATIONS TO REACH 1. Sri Lanka Damaged infrastructure, civil war aftermath 2. Maldives Some islands not yet contacted, some too small to land planes on 3. Aceh Remote, damaged infrastructure, separatist conflict 4. Somalia No functioning government

A larger convoy - carrying food to the remote north and east of Sri Lanka - has since left WFP depots.

But the WFP had no presence in Aceh, northern Indonesia - another area damaged by civil war. The province, which was close to the epicentre of the 9.0 magnitude undersea quake, had been off-limits to international agencies.

"I don't think any aid agency in the world can stand up and say they are reaching everybody in need right now," WFP spokesman Greg Barrow told the BBC News website.

"It's still early days. We are moving as quickly as humanly possible to get people on the ground, to open supply chains. It's not something we can set up in 24 hours."

That sentiment is echoed by Mostafa Mohagegh, operations co-ordinator for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, who organised relief efforts when an earthquake flattened the Iranian city of Bam a year ago.

"We are more or less used to disaster, but this is a lot more complex," Mr Mohagegh told the BBC.

"It covers three regions, and the scale of the disaster is difficult to assess. The ambiguity about the scale of the disaster is something that is bothering everybody. But we have to act as soon as we can see the need, so we act from day one."

Military aid

The global relief effort is being co-ordinated by the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), run by Jan Egeland.

In the days following the earthquake and tsunami, OCHA sent teams of up to eight people into some of the areas affected worst to assess the situation.

KEY AID PLEDGES World Bank: $250m UK: $96m China: $60m France: $56m EU $44m Netherlands: $36m US: $35m Canada: $33m Japan: $30m Australia: $27m Denmark: $15.6m Saudi Arabia: $10m Norway: $6.6m Taiwan: $5.1m Finland: $3.4m Kuwait: $2.1m UAE: $2m Source: Reuters, United Nations Tsunami: how to help Quake press takes stock

The UN now boasts teams in Banda Aceh and Jakarta in Indonesia, Galle and Colombo in Sri Lanka, Male in the Maldives, and Phuket and Bangkok in Thailand.

They are working with staff from the WFP, the World Health Organisation and Unicef to provide relief for an estimated 700,000 displaced people along the coast.

In addition, the Red Cross has fact-finding teams in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Maldives, with emergency response units already in place in Sri Lanka and Indonesia working on water sanitation, logistics and basic healthcare.

But the unique scale of the tsunami's devastation has prompted some unlikely alliances.

The US has despatched the Lincoln battle group and a naval expeditionary strike group to the region, to work alongside US and international aid agencies in hard-to-reach coastal areas.

Appeals by the Red Cross and the UN have met with a rapid response, and more than $220 million has already been pledged by national governments.

But the initial generosity will need to continue: the WFP has estimated it alone may need $100 million more, and the UN is preparing to make a large, global appeal for funds on 6 January.

"There is no point appealing for something that you can't deliver in time or use in time," says Jamie McGoldrick, spokesman for OCHA.

"It's like a taxi meter. The total just keeps going up."