The United Nations Tuesday appealed for almost a third of a billion dollars to provide humanitarian assistance to typhoon hit regions of the Philippines, where aid workers are laboring around the clock to get in urgently needed survival supplies, such as food, clean water, shelter, and basic medicines. U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos launched the $301 million flash appeal from Manila, where she is surveying the damage by Typhoon Haiyan, which ripped through nine regions in south-east Asia over the weekend. "The appeal of $301 million covers an initial period of six months," U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) spokesperson Jens Laerke said in Geneva. "The humanitarian community continues to scale up its operations to provide lifesaving aid. Many areas do remain inaccessible; we are reaching into them little by little." Over 11 million people have been affected by what the U.N. World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has called the strongest tropical cyclone so far this year and one of the most intense on record. At least 670,000 people have been displaced, the majority of them in evacuation centers, the rest in host communities or makeshift shelters, according to OCHA.
