Singapore is planning an integrated Team Singapore relief mission for future disaster aid, even as it sends in more help to countries recently hit by disasters.

A 23—strong medical team returned from Myanmar last week where they treated nearly 5,000 victims of Cyclone Nargis.

During their two—week stay there, the Singapore relief workers had to work without electricity and power generators.

Amran Amir, Senior Administrator, Singapore Red Cross, said: "We were not too sure of what to expect because we did not do any official recce of the area itself. We also did not know what we were going to face so whatever we have with the load, we just have to make do."

Amran’s recent trip to Myanmar was especially worrying for his family, mainly due to communications difficulties. They couldn’t reach him on his mobile phone. However, Amran was able to call home every other day using a local phone from the Myanmar authorities.

Doctors and nurses treated up to 600 sick and injured each day.

And they said they could not have done it without the operations staff from charities like Mercy Relief and Singapore Red Cross that helped to co—ordinate transport and buy medical supplies. The two non—government agencies said they have over 20 staff and volunteers who are experienced with operations, administration and logistics support in disaster relief.

There are now plans to pool all resources from government and non—government agencies to form a Team Singapore mission for future disaster relief.

Dr Fatimah Lateef, Director, Mercy Relief, said: "For example, for doctors and nurses, we’re trained to do what we do professionally, that is to treat patients, to do nursing drops and all that. But logistically, from the operations perspective, we may not be very well versed except for some of us who are very experienced.

"The logisticians can scout for transport. Sometimes, we also procure our products and supplies on the ground in the local country we’re in. And it’s a lot easier if we can transport all the stuff that we need. So for example, in the recent Myanmar case, we have our logisticians go down to Yangon to look for pharmaceutical supplies and that would cost a lot cheaper."

Dr Fatimah hopes the Team Singapore initiative can be achieved through more idea—sharing forums amongst the different agencies.

Sixteen survivors of deadly cyclone have been released one day after they were arrested for complaining about delays in delivering aid, an official said on Thursday.

Most of the group were women, accompanied by their young children, who on Tuesday went with two interpreters to the offices of the UN Development Programme to complain about the slow pace of the relief operation.

News of the release comes as a team of aid experts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have gained full access to parts of cyclone-devastated Burma, ASEAN's secretary general said on Thursday.

"Now we have 250-plus of our, what we call our post-Nargis assessment teams, in the Delta, in the Yangon division, in the south and they will be doing the full assessment and they will have full access to the affected region," Surin Pitsuwan told reporters in Singapore.

"I think if we look at that, it's already a great achievement and we will try to maintain that momentum", he said.

ASEAN said one week ago that the Emergency Rapid Assessment Team had begun to deploy in the delta region to start a long-awaited examination of the needs of millions of people affected by the storm.

It said then that its advance teams, ferried by UN World Food Programme helicopter, would compile a first-hand "progress report" for an ASEAN Roundtable meeting in Rangoon on June 24.

Surin said there were no doubts that the team would be able to do its job adequately and with credibility, "coming up with a report that would be taken up by all parties in order to be the basis of rehabilitation and reconstruction later on."

Inciting international outrage, Burma's isolated military regime had largely barred foreign aid workers from gaining access to the delta, which bore the brunt of the cyclone.

Relief workers slowly moved into the region in late May after the junta started to ease restrictions on access, and asked fellow ASEAN nations to coordinate the international relief effort.

But the United Nations estimates that while 2.4 million people need emergency aid, about one million have not yet received any foreign assistance.

The ASEAN team is working under a tripartite arrangement with the United Nations and the Burmese government.

One Southeast Asian diplomat in Rangoon said last week that the team would finish its work by month's end, although ASEAN says its findings will only be released in mid-July.

"We expect them to meet a lot of difficulties, with many parts of the delta remaining physically difficult to reach by road or boats," the diplomat said.

"We are hoping we may be able to fill in the gaps, although we realise there is a big void in terms of aid to be filled."

Surin said things had been going "very well" on the ground.

"Certainly there are rooms for improvement but we are working on that and we have been assured that, yes, we will work together until the mission is accomplished," he said on the sidelines of a meeting about human rights in ASEAN.

The deployment of the ASEAN team last week came a day after the United States gave up trying to convince the junta to allow aid-laden warships stationed off the delta to deliver their vital supplies.

ASEAN has often been criticised for failing to act firmly against its member Burma, which has frequently embarrassed its neighbours with its refusal to shift towards democracy.

AFP

CBS News anchor Katie Couric asked Sen. John McCain about issues ranging from the situation in Burma to the Democratic field in the first of a two-part interview. McCain’s 96-year-old mother, Roberta McCain, also joined them. She spoke candidly about her marriage to another distinguished senator, their lives during WWII, her son’s captivity in Vietnam, and coming up Friday, her thoughts on the "age issue" her son might face with voters.

Thursday, Couric asked McCain what he would do about the situation in Burma. He said he'd enlist the help of the Chinese.

Sen. John McCain: I would start putting some pressures on ... appealing to them to have this junta - at least allowing aid to care for these people. This is a very bad government. And right now I think that we should ask the other countries in the region, as well as China, that they have close ties to, to really put some pressure on them for humanitarian purposes.

Couric: Do you think enough is being done now?

McCain: I don't know. The Chinese have an image problem right now, as we know, over Tibet. I think we could tell them that it would help their reputation if they weighed in heavily to ... get the - I use the word government loosely - to help in this; let assistance come in in this humanitarian effort.

CBS News

Ten thousand pregnant cyclone survivors are in urgent need of proper care in Burma, a U.N. expert said Wednesday, as relief agencies again raised concerns about the junta's willingness to accept foreign aid.

Pregnancy and childbirth were already relatively risky before Cyclone Nargis struck Burma, one of Asia's poorest countries, said William A. Ryan, a spokesman for the U.N. Population Fund.

More than 100 women give birth every day in the area affected by the cyclone, he told reporters in Bangkok, Thailand.

"The destruction of health centers and loss of midwives have greatly increased the risks," he said. "It is clear that many pregnant women do not have anywhere to go to deliver with skilled assistance."

Ryan said that wrecked health facilities should be rebuilt and there is also a need for trained midwives.

The maternal mortality rate in Burma before the May 2-3 storm was 380 per 100,000 births — almost four times the rate in Thailand and 60 times the rate in Japan, Ryan said.

He said the U.N. Population Fund has provided supplies to Burma's Health Ministry for distribution to health clinics in 10 affected townships, including hospital equipment and rubber gloves.

AP

Burma's ruling military junta denied reports Wednesday that it was deducting a 10 percent tax from foreign donations to cyclone victims, saying all incoming money is being spent on relief efforts.

The state-owned New Light of Myanmar newspaper said foreign radio broadcasts had wrongly accused the government of deducting the tax from donations deposited in Burma's Foreign Trade Bank.

The state bank, which usually deducts 10 percent from all foreign currency deposits, has opened special accounts to accept U.S. dollars, euros and Singapore dollars from which all donations would be fully channeled to cyclone survivors, the newspaper said.

Organizations and individuals who have misused relief funds sent from abroad will be punished, it said.

The United Nations estimates Cyclone Nargis affected 2.4 million people and that more than 1 million of them, mostly in the hardest-hit Irrawaddy delta, still need help. The cyclone, which struck May 2-3, killed more than 78,000, according to the government.

In separate reports, state media said there have been no outbreaks of contagious diseases in storm-hit areas and that 911 staffers from international aid organizations and neighboring countries were issued visas to enter the country between May 5 and June 5.

The junta has been criticized for dragging its feet on issuing visas and, until recently, not allowing foreign aid workers into the Irrawaddy delta, where most of the victims are.

Briefing foreign aid agencies in Rangoon on Tuesday, the government stressed that all aid deliveries had to be coordinated with Burmese authorities at both the central and local levels.

On Tuesday, a major operation was launched to assess the needs of storm survivors in a sign the junta is finally cooperating in international aid efforts.

Some 250 experts from the U.N., the government and Southeast Asian nations headed into the Irrawaddy delta Tuesday by truck, boat and helicopter for a village-by-village survey, the U.N. said.

Over the next 10 days, they will determine how much food, clean water and temporary shelter the survivors require, along with the cost of rebuilding houses and schools and reviving the agriculture-based economy.

"It has taken quite a long time, but this shows the government is on board by its commitment to facilitate the relief operation and the scaling up that people are asking for," said Amanda Pitt, a U.N. spokeswoman in Bangkok, Thailand.

However, Tuesday's positive development was a stark contrast to reports that 18 cyclone victims — women and children — on their way to the U.N. office to plead for help were arrested in Rangoon.

Authorities detained the 18 as they walked to the U.N. offices to complain about not receiving any government assistance, according to a government official who refused to be identified for fear of retaliation by the leadership.

The group, from Dagon township on the outskirts of Rangoon, was bundled into a waiting police car and remained in detention, witnesses said.

AP