The UN’s humanitarian agency (OCHA) has disclosed that hospitals in central and northwestern Myanmar are “struggling to cope with the influx of people injured during the earthquake.”
The agency added that it includes hospitals in Mandalay, Magway, Naypyidaw and Sagain.
Hospitals and health facilities have also “sustained extensive damage or destruction” and international organisations “are preparing to deploy mobile surgical and medical teams, along with field hospitals, to provide urgent life-saving care.”
According to the agency, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator has allocated $5m from the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to support urgent response efforts.
Myanmar is grappling with the aftermath of its most devastating earthquake in decades, with the death toll rising to more than 1,600.
Myanmar’s military government announced that more than 3,400 people were injured, and that at least 139 people are still missing after the magnitude 7.7 earthquake.
Rescue teams continue to search for survivors trapped under rubble, despite damaged infrastructure hampering efforts.
The UN’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, said that a severe lack of medical supplies as well as damage to infrastructure such as roads was hampering efforts to respond to earthquake.
The agency added that hospitals and health facilities have also sustained extensive damage or have been destroyed.
Across the border in Thailand, rescuers in Bangkok worked Sunday to pluck out survivors trapped when a 30-storey skyscraper under construction collapsed after the Friday earthquake.
Authorities in the Thai capital, Bangkok, revealed that the death toll in the city has risen to at least 17.
The Bangkok Metropolitan Authority said that 32 people were injured and 83 still unaccounted for, most from the site of a 30-storey tower block under construction that collapsed when the magnitude 7.7 quake struck on Friday.
In contrast to the situation where there is widespread damage in Myanmar, the situation in Thailand is very much concentrated to the construction site.
Nonetheless, Thailand has dispatched 55 military personnel and six rescue dogs, along with equipment, including cranes and diggers, to help with the relief effort in neighbouring Myanmar.
Myanmar’s Shadow Government Calls For Partial Ceasefire
Meanwhile, the shadow National Unity Government (NUG) in Myanmar has declared a two-week partial ceasefire to allow for relief operations.
It said in a statement that the People’s Defence Forces (PDF) will “implement a two-week pause in offensive military operations, except for defensive actions, in earthquake-affected areas starting March 30, 2025.”
The government-in-exile said that it would “collaborate with the UN and NGOs to ensure security, transportation, and the establishment of temporary rescue and medical camps” in areas that it controls.
Myanmar’s military has been fighting a civil war on multiple fronts since it removed Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government in February 2021.
It is opposed by both the PDF and ethnic armed organisations, many of which have been fighting for decades.
The NUG consists mostly of legislators removed in the coup who are working to topple military rule.
The military imposed a yearlong state of emergency after seizing power, extending it for six-month intervals multiple times as it brutally crushed peaceful pro-democracy protests and battled ethnic armed groups and anti-military fighters that emerged in response to the coup.
The country has since been embroiled in a bloody civil war with long-established rebel groups and newly formed pro-democracy ones.
Commander-in-Chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing – who is also serving as the country’s self-appointed Prime Minister and President – had promised to hold elections by August 2023.
However, he has repeatedly delayed them due to the increasingly intense armed rebellion across the country.
About 3.5 million people were displaced by the raging civil war, many at risk of hunger, even before the quake struck.
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