Cyclone Nargis struck in Myanmar leaving more than 138,000 dead or missing and affecting some 2.4 million.  Now people has to travel by boat at least 4 hours because they are far from the main town, were they are given food, oil, salt and so on by the World Food Program.

According to the UN, just over half of Labutta's 374,000 inhabitants were severely affected by the cyclone, with half its 500 villages destroyed. By 26 June, WFP had reached more than 300,000 cyclone-affected beneficiaries in Labutta with 3,850 MT of mixed commodities. More than 500 villages/ward/camps under 50 village tracts, the smallest government administrative zone in Labutta, were covered.

Actually, almost 28 percent of the affected people reported having no food stock available on the day of the survey, while another 43 percent said they only had food stocks sufficient to last between one and seven days.
People were drawing from multiple sources to meet their daily food requirements: 51 percent were dependent on humanitarian food assistance and 54 percent on purchases from local markets.

Meanwhile, in Yangon Division, which was also badly affected by the category four storm, but where urban markets have largely recovered, the food agency had been providing cash assistance to about 49,490 cyclone-affected people.  "This is the average amount one would spend on food on a daily basis," the WFP official said of the US 50 cents daily allowance.  "Giving them cash will ensure they will be able to buy their own food," she explained of the four-week programme for beneficiaries which began in early June.
The programme, has, however, since been halted by the authorities, due to their strong reservations about cash handouts.

                                                           Source: www.irinnews.org