Burmese take cyclone disaster in their stride

The doomsday scenarios that the world media predicted have not materialised. Cyclone Nargis blew into Burma on May 2 and, with the military junta refusing to allow the aid agencies in, by the middle of the month our press warned that 1.5m were on the verge of starvation.

There were reports that as many people had died in the Irrawaddy Delta as the 230,000 who perished in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. Thankfully, the West was wrong. The death toll is tragic - the most recent official estimate said that 84,500 had died and almost 54,000 were missing - but it isn't nearly as much as we feared. The Burmese simply got on with the business of survival themselves.

Thousands of the delta's villagers, forced to scavenge in wasted rice paddies and fields, have proved remarkably resilient in the face of

terrible conditions and a callous, incompetent ruling elite.

"The Burmese people are used to getting nothing," said the US charge d'affaires in Rangoon, Shari Villarose. "I am not getting the sense that there have been a lot of deaths as a result of the delay [in getting aid to the delta]."

Doctors from Medecins sans Frontieres and other charities have mostly been treating curable abdominal and respiratory problems. Isolated outbreaks of typhoid and even cholera were smothered early on.

"Villagers have their own herbal remedies for many of the health problems that arose in their communities in the wake of the cyclone," said a French doctor.

Although a crude commentary in the regime press aroused international indignation - it said that cyclone survivors could exist