INDONESIA: International relief poured into Indonesia's earthquake disaster zone yesterday but, for many of the estimated 647,000 displaced people, aid was not arriving quickly enough and healthcare remained patchy.
Thousands of women and children lined roads clogged with relief vehicles and curious onlookers, asking motorists for money so they could buy food. Some stood next to a banner that read, "Don't just look. Help."
The death toll from Saturday's 6.3-magnitude quake on Java island rose to 6,234 after officials found 388 more bodies, a social affairs ministry spokesman said today. At least 30,000 were injured.
The main hospital in hardest-hit Bantul district remained overwhelmed, with patients cramming corridors or sleeping on pieces of cardboard in the car park, and doctors complained of a lack of supplies.
The United Nations said the crisis appeared to be easing with the arrival of aid workers from more than 20 countries, and Indonesia's president said he had enough confidence in the relief efforts to return to the capital, Jakarta.
"Certainly, a lot more needs to be done," Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said. But he said roads had been cleared, the main airport's runway repaired and reopened, and electricity restored in some areas.
The quake that struck soon after dawn reduced more than 135,000 houses to piles of bricks, tiles and wood in less than a minute, displacing some 647,000 people, said Bambang Priyohadi, a provincial official. Nearly one-third of them now live under plastic sheets close to their former homes or in rice fields or by sides of roads, while the rest are staying with relatives, he said.
Their misery has been compounded by days of on-again-off-again rain and blazing sun, with another downfall dousing the region yesterday.
Getting food and fresh water to survivors remained a pressing concern, with some $3 million (€2.34 million) needed over the next few months to pay for emergency rations of enriched noodles and high-energy biscuits, said the UN World Food Programme. Many villagers complained they were not getting the help they needed.
"All we got today was a half kilogram of rice," said Ratimah (60) who has a family of four. "It's not enough." But Jan Egeland, the UN's top humanitarian official, said the aid effort appeared to be going well overall, with major improvements in co-ordination among aid organisations and nations since the 2004 tsunami that killed 131,000 people in Indonesia's Aceh province alone.
Conditions had improved in at least two hospitals in the area, where parking lots and hallways that had been filled with hundreds of victims in the days after the quake were clear, with most patients being treated in beds. The main hospital in Bantul was still overwhelmed, however, with more than 400 patients for just over 100 beds.
"We are short of splints, gauze, even beds," said Dr Hidayat, the hospital's emergency co-ordinator, adding that 90 per cent of the victims had bone fractures. Chinese doctors treated patients at a field hospital, while US marines set up an emergency unit in a soccer stadium in Bantul district, home to most of the victims.Relief teams from Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore were also providing assistance.
Though international rescue crews have said there was little hope of finding more bodies, a Singaporean search team discovered one corpse at the bottom of a cliff, apparently propelled over the edge by the force of the quake, said Maj Ow Yong Tuck Wah.