Myanmar: ‘She Cries in her Sleep’: Deeper Crisis Looms Beneath Devastation from Myanmar Quake

May 8, 2025 | UN News
UN News
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“I hate earthquakes. Earthquakes took my mother and my aunt away,” five-year-old Khin Yadanar told the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), after both her mother and aunt were killed when a brick wall collapsed on them.

Around 6.5 million children were already in need of humanitarian assistance before the earthquake, which compounded existing vulnerabilities resulting from the brutal civil war between multiple armed opposition groups and the military junta which seized power in a February 2021 coup.

Families now face a further threat from flooding and landslides with the arrival of the monsoon season. As health services collapsed after the earthquake, “women, especially pregnant mothers, were severely impacted,” said Yu Yu, a midwife in Mandalay, speaking to the UN’s reproductive health agency, UNFPA.