Although there are no reports of disease epidemics, the United Nations now believes that in the worst hit parts of Myanmar as many as one in five children are suffering from diarrhea, a disease that already disproportionately affects Burmese children.
"In a situation like this where you have many people without food and water and you have children not getting care or shelter, the conditions are rife for disease," Shantha Bloemen of UNICEF told ABC News. "Not having any sanitary conditions, having to go to the toilet in the open -- it's extremely dangerous."
And still, the government refuses to allow help into the country, saying today that it is "not in a position to receive rescue and information teams from foreign countries at the moment."
An aid flight from Qatar was turned back at the airport because some of the passengers did not have proper visas, The Associated Press reported.
"At present Myanmar is giving priority to receiving relief aid and distributing them to the storm-hit regions with its own resources," the government said today in a message carried by the official Myanma Ahlin newspaper.
But there are more than 1 million people who need aid to survive and who don't have it, and the government seems more concerned about the referendum.
"It shows how unreasonable and crazy they can be," a shop owner told Reuters in Yangon, the country's largest city, of the decision to hold a vote in Yangon. "They just want to celebrate victory even though the people are suffering."
There is still almost no electricity in Yangon, where 6 million people live.
"We haven't had electricity for a long time," a resident told ABC News, refusing to be identified. "The cyclone gave us a total blackout. … In the middle of the town, we hope to get it in a month."
The referendum and the refusal to admit foreign aid workers are part of a long tradition of the Myanmar government's fear of foreign governments plotting to overthrow the military junta.
The government suspects "that many of the same people who have funded humanitarian activities are also funding opposition activities and dissident activities in the country as well," Thant Myint-U, the author of "The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma," told ABC News.
"This is also a government that follows a zero risk policy. So if they think at all that something could be aimed at undermining them, and undermining regime security, or national security as they see it, their instinct is to back away."
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