More than 84,500 people have been confirmed as dead in the wake of Tropical Cyclone Nargis that lashed the southeast Asian country of Myanmar over the weekend of May 3-4. Some 53,836 still remain missing and more than 19,000 were injured.

News reports indicate three-quarters of the structures in the Irrawaddy delta region were destroyed by fierce winds, rain and storm surges. Villages have been completely flattened in many places. 

Hundreds of thousands have been left homeless and the United Nations says that fewer than a quarter of the 2.4 million people affected have received aid.

Many survivors are living in makeshift camps around the edges of the disaster zone caused by the cyclone.

Myanmar is not known to have an adequate disaster warning system and many rural buildings are constructed of thatch, bamboo and other materials easily destroyed by fierce storms. Many of the survivors of the disaster live in some of Myanmar''s poorest provinces.

At a meeting with foreign diplomats and representatives of UN and international aid agencies, Myanmar''s foreign ministry officials said they welcomed international humanitarian assistance and urgently need roofing materials, plastic sheets and temporary tents, medicine, water purifying tablets, blankets and mosquito nets.

Since the cyclone struck, aid agencies already in the country, such as Church World Service, DanChurchAid, and Norwegian Church Aid, started relief efforts with supplies they had available and by buying from local sources.

Church World Service now reports that with its local partners in Myanmar, it had reached a total of 572 villages in the disaster-affected region and had provided supplies sufficient to serve more than 980,000 beneficiaries and had delivered 3,944 "water baskets." The water baskets, which capture rainwater, alone deliver the potential for 986,000 people to have clean drinking water. Each of the portable, lightweight plastic water containers holds the equivalent of a day''s clean drinking water for 250 people.

CWS says its local partners have also provided temporary shelter plastic tarpaulins for 41,374 households--more than 25 percent of the total number of households (160,000) the United Nations has estimated to have received emergency tarps so far.

The stricken area is Myanmar’s richest agricultural region, and it is feared the cyclone has caused terrible damage on the rice crop. World rice prices are at a record high already, provoking food riots in more than 30 countries. Myanmar is a net exporter of rice, and the destruction of crops in the Irrawaddy Delta will only add to upward pressure on international prices.

CWS is now shifting its work to farm recovery and food security.

The Upper Myanmar Evangelical Lutheran Church reports no damage to its churches, but asks prayers for the people of Myanmar.

Another ELCA companion church, the Myanmar Council of Churches, meanwhile reports damage.