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The following is an excerpt from CNN Larry King Live which aired on January 2, 2005 – 21:00 ET. It features Larry King and Deval Sanghavi, managing partner of Dasra.
KING: Joining us on beeper phone, from Chennai Tamil Nadu, India, is Deval Sanghavi. He is managing partner of Dasra, the nongovernmental organization working with nonprofit groups in India helping facilitate direct relief aids in that part of the world.
What's the situation there, Deval?
DEVAL SANGHAVI, MANAGING PARTNER DASRA RELIEF GROUP IN CHENNAI TAMIL NADU, INDIA: Well, the situation here has improved, actually, quite drastically over the last couple of days.
Local aid and relief has finally gotten through to various villages. And many of the relief camps, actually, have started clearing up, whereby you have villagers coming closer to their villages, setting up makeshift tents and receiving food, supplies and medical equipment closer to their village, thereby decreasing the chances of cholera and various other diseases which are spreading in the relief camps.
KING: How's the government reacting there?
SANGHAVI: The government actually has been pretty proactive in bringing in direct relief, mostly food as well as 4,000 or 5,000 Rupees per family for assistance.
That being said, they still haven't addressed longer-term issues such as livelihoods of these fisherman.
KING: And how is material getting to people? Is that happening easily?
SANGHAVI: There actually -- the government as well as Dasra has partnered up with various community-based organizations. And these community-based organizations have been very successful in planning out sort of which household needs what material and giving tokens to each family, thereby ensuring that uniform distribution occurs.
That being said, in the more interior villages, the ones that are sort of further away from the highways, materials are not reaching there as quick as possible because most people want to sort of go to the villages that they see as opposed to the villages that are further away and more inconvenient to them.
KING: How are the people doing?
SANGHAVI: The people are doing much better. We actually had a meeting yesterday with fishermen from over 15 villages, and they are actually ready to go back in the water.
They were asking more about their livelihoods as opposed to the relief efforts going on right now with basic food and medicine, which is quite encouraging because they also realize that in order for them to support their families, it won't be the government or donors coming in, but the longer-term they need both fishing nets and engines so they, themselves, can take up the burden of helping their families going forward.
KING: Thank you, Deval. Deval Sanghavi reporting in India.
Jan Egeland will be leaving us in a couple of minutes, the United Nations undersecretary for humanitarian affairs. Do you plan to go to the area, Jan?
EGELAND: I will have to stay here in the operations center. But the secretary general, himself, will go to Jakarta and there launch our appeal on behalf of all of the disaster-stricken societies.
There we will be asking for hundreds of millions of dollars for -- from Somalia in the West, to Indonesia in the East. We hope that governments will still be generous. We hope the public sector will be generous. We hope private donations will keep coming because now we will not only have to help people survive the first few weeks. We will have to rebuild their societies.
And the only one who can coordinate this massive effort of nongovernmental organizations, of governments, of the local authorities, of the national authorities is the United Nations.
KING: Secretary General Kofi Annan said today this could take over a decade.
EGELAND: This could take a decade altogether. Not to make life speed good again, but to rebuild everything.
What I hope is that in the next few weeks we will be able to have everybody getting the minimum of life saving support in Sri Lanka, in India, in Thailand, in Maltese, in Somalia, we are reaching out to most and soon, I hope, to all of those in need.
In Northern Sumatra and Anacha, we still have, unfortunately, many, many days to go to reach everybody. But I'm now going in a telephone conference with a call group of nations, including the United States, where we will be talking even more about helicopters, of the hardware and of the logistics of getting this massive aid effort effective and lifesaving.
KING: Thank you, Jan. We'll be seeing you during the week. We'll be covering this, of course, every night.
Jan Egeland of the U.N., another U.N. spokesman for UNICEF will join us at the bottom of the hour.
Senator Frist, I know when you go to Africa every year, you actually do surgery. You're on hand. Do you expect you might be called upon to do some treating, on hand treating?
FRIST: Larry, usually when I go into -- whether it's at Kenya, or the Sudan, or Uganda, I do operate. I do get involved in medical care. Again, that's what I do. That's what I did for 20 years. And that's really what I am, even today.
So I will not hesitate. That's not the purpose of this mission, it's too short; but if things are short handed, absolutely. That's what I took that medical, ethical oath to do 20 years ago and would, of course, do just that.
What Deval said a few minutes ago is something we're going to all have to think about as well, is economic development. He talked about the fisheries and the fishermen returning, which to me is really heartening.
And that's one of the things I want to look at very closely as well to get these economies back. People need those jobs to get back on their feet.
KING: We'll take a break. We'll be back with more on this special Sunday night edition of LARRY KING LIVE.
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