Scottish businessman donates two boats to Burma as hospital ships

A SCOTTISH businessman has donated two cruise boats to act as floating hospitals in the relief effort in Burma.

Paul Strachan, who runs the Pandaw River Cruise Company in the cyclone-hit country, is refitting two 180ft boats as medical aid vessels and loaning them to two charities, Save The Children and Merlin.

His gift comes as more than 130,000 people have been pronounced dead or missing. The hardest-hit area, the Irrawaddy delta, is teeming with up to 2.5 million survivors left homeless by the cyclone.

Burma's military junta yesterday refused to allow a French navy ship with 1,500 tons of food, drugs and medication to use small boats to deliver help.

But Pandaw IV and Pandaw II are allowed unrestricted access because they are entirely staffed with Burmese crew, including 20 doctors and other medical staff from a private hospital in Burma.

Mr Strachan, 45, from Edinburgh, flies out to Rangoon tonight to oversee the mercy mission.

He has hired a local barge and tug to ferry supplies to the river ships and secured private donations of £200,000 to help with fuel costs – each ship uses £500 of diesel every day.

Mr Strachan has had strong links with Burma since he went out as a gap-year student 25 years ago helping to build power stations in the jungle.

Also a Burma historian, he told The Scotsman he wanted to help after hearing of thousands of destitute victims lining roadsides, begging for help in the absence of large-scale government or foreign relief operations.

He said: "I feel this is the tip of the iceberg. All these people living in the wetlands, their stilted houses have been flattened. A monsoon is striking Burma right now and when it floods, and the disease kicks in, that is when the real suffering will start. It's very heart-wrenching but you have got to put your emotions aside and cry later."

He added: "At present, bulk aid cannot be flown in and cleared through the airports fast enough to meet the desperate requirements.

"With over 25 years' experience of working in Burma, I am doubtful if traditional diplomacy, the UN or the intervention of other countries can resolve this impasse.

"My philosophy is to stop fussing over airplanes and just to go shopping. We move fast – no meetings or discussion, just real action."

Pandaw II has now left Mandalay and is on her way to the delta. Pandaw IV is travelling from Henzada, a city in south-west Burma, and is undergoing a refit.

The former bar will become an operating theatre, the dining room a trauma ward and the sundeck a clinic.

The original company, Irrawaddy Flotilla, was established by Scots merchants in 1865. By the 1920s, the company ran over 650 vessels on the rivers of Burma and became the largest privately owned fleet of ships in the world.

But in 1942, the entire fleet was scuppered when the Japanese invaded.

Mr Strachan, whose great-grandfather worked as a ship's captain for the Irrawaddy Flotilla, restored an original Clyde-built steamer called the Pandaw and went on to build four replicas.

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