Winter snows expected to arrive later this week may further hinder relief efforts, and have pitted humanitarian workers in a "race against winter" to airlift supplies and clear roads blocked by mudslides, Undersecretary-General Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, told reporters Monday at U.N. World Headquarters in New York.

"We have two, three, four weeks left before the whole area is covered by deep snow," the relief chief said.

As many as 3 million survivors remain homeless, and humanitarian officials believe the death toll may climb to 80,000 as temperatures drop to five below zero Fahrenheit and snowfall levels reach the 8-foot mark by January.

Nearly 200,000 villagers in high-elevation hamlets are yet to receive adequate food, medicine and building materials because of their remote location; and as many as 20,000 survivors have obtained no aid whatsoever, he said. Many of these isolated villagers refuse to leave because they feel attached to their ancestral homeland.

"People are still living out in the open," says Bilal Khan, a relief volunteer with the U.N.'s World Food Program in the Kashmir village of Balakot destroyed by the Oct. 8 quake. "We have not received tents or any form of shelter, nor medical assistance, nor food. We carried the worst injured down off the mountain, but there are still about 1,000 people still up there, who will die unless they get help."

Funding for relief efforts have not been enough, say U.N. officials who have collected only $133 million of the $550 million they requested following the earthquake that measured 7.6 on the Richter scale and sent over 1,000 aftershocks across the region. U.N. aid coordinators called for $42.4 million Monday at U.N. offices in Geneva to facilitate pre-winter relief efforts.

"Much more was pledged for reconstruction than we have received for emergency efforts," Egeland said. "It makes us worried that in the middle of this marathon sprint, agencies have to fall instead of advance in their relief efforts. That would be tragic, especially now that we are making such great progress."

Funding is now most needed, the relief coordinators said, to obtain stoves and kerosene for heating and building materials like plastic sheeting and corrugated tin that can be used to build winter shelters.

"The concept is, one warm room per family, before it becomes too cold," Egeland said.

U.N. officials nonetheless reported significant progress establishing shelter and care facilities for hundreds of thousands of survivors in low lying areas. Well over 300,000 tents and 3.2 million blankets have been delivered throughout the region, and the U.N. World Food Program says it is currently deploying 17 helicopters to 48 Pakistan Army-administered relief camps.

Egeland said another 300 million tents were "in the pipeline."

Fear that overcrowding may lead to cholera outbreaks in tent cities has become a growing threat for relief workers to handle, especially as an estimated 150,000 additional survivors are expected to flood camps as roads, closed to landslides, reopen over the next few weeks before becoming impassable from snow.

Quake relief supplies were transferred at the disputed Indian-Pakistani border in Kashmir on Monday as part of diplomatic efforts between the two states.

Egeland refuted statements that Pakistan was forgotten by relief organizations and donor nations because of its Muslim population or distance from the United States and Europe. Donors gave roughly $1.5 billion to U.N.-coordinated relief efforts following the Dec. 28, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami, compared to the $133 million collected by U.N. organizations in Pakistan so far.

"There was this phenomenal outpouring to Aceh, an Indonesian Muslim area where there are no tourists and where everyone really gave." Egeland said of Banda Aceh in northern Indonesia.

He attributed popular response to the tsunami to a time corresponding with budget year starts and Christmas holidays in the West. "The tsunami was unique."

The United Nations further attributed limited funding for the Pakistan quake to a lack of compelling news imagery.

"If there had been more images from more tourists of the actual earthquake and how it fell on the children and the people and the people didn't drown in a wave but drowned in rubble, I think we would have seen more outpouring," Egeland says.

In spite of pending winter weather and lacking funds, U.N. officials maintain their relief efforts are in keeping with natural disaster relief in other regions.

"It doesn't mean we are paralyzed," Egeland said of funding. "We are super active and super effective."

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