In Vanuatu, cyclone victims received food and emergency aid following the storm.

At that rate, it takes just two or three weeks for the population to make up for the loss of 125,000 cyclone victims.

The group decided that the best way to help the cyclone victims was to provide irrigation facilities.

The minister of Andhra requested that the government send rice, pulses, oil and other materials to cyclone victims.

They are found not only among the cyclone victims but routinely throughout the country.

The EU countries delivering aid should insist on monitoring to ensure that aid reaches the cyclone victims most in need.

Now other reports of an equally alarming nature are filtering out, such as the news of the arrests of cyclone victims who had sought help from UN offices.

It has also forced cyclone victims to leave temporary camps and to return to homes that were destroyed in the disaster.

Burma has a responsibility to provide aid to cyclone victims and to give free access to the affected regions to international humanitarian organisations.

Like a cyclone victim emerging from a storm cellar to survey the damage, Asia ended 1998 with equal measures of shock and relief.