Just eight short years ago, Myanmar suffered its worst ever recorded natural disaster. In the west, we didn't hear or see much about it because of media restrictions and the military government at the time being resistant to outside help to deal with this national emergency.

On on the morning of 2nd May 2008, cyclone Nargis made landfall in Myanmar with wind speeds in excess of 200kph. For the next two days, it battered the Irrawaddy delta area in the south of the country. The death toll was incredible, estimated to be at least 138,000 with well over a million other people affected with homes and communities totally destroyed.

Just think of those numbers again for a moment. In a country with a population a little less than Britain, that's the equivalent of the whole of my town and borough of Colchester being killed over a two day period and nothing left to speak of in the borough itself. When you live so far away, this disaster means little but when the area affected is a short distance away from me now, it brings it home to you the scale of human loss.

The challenges for the international development community are still ongoing and you will hear phrases like 'disaster preparedness', 'resilience' and 'community capacity building'. The work continues....