Cyclone ravaged Myanmar faces a second catastrophe unless access to the country is granted to allow aid more quickly, says the United Nations.

Cyclone Nargis struck the South-East Asian nation on May 2, leaving a path of death and destruction across the Irrawaddy delta region and the country's largest city, Yangon.

The official death toll from the ruling military Government has reached almost 32,000, with over 34,000 others missing. However, the United Nations, international aid agencies and other officials say the toll could well be over 100,000.

The United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says some 12 days after the cyclone stuck Myanmar, the UN and its partners have reached 270,000 at-risk people, less than a third of those affected.

Spokesperson Elizabeth Byrs says despite some progress being made, efforts to help the 1.5 million people impacted by Cyclone Nargis must be enhanced.

Ms Byrs says heavy rains have been forecast to hit Myanmar, which will further impede aid efforts, and she has called for an air and sea corridor to channel aid in large quantities as quickly as possible.

Ms Byrs says there have been encouraging signs with 34 new visas being granted to UN personnel yesterday, but she says this is not enough to respond to a disaster of this magnitude.

At a press conference at UN Headquarters in New York yesterday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters that unless more aid gets into the country very quickly, Myanmar faces an outbreak of infectious diseases that could dwarf today's crisis.

"I therefore call, in the most strenuous terms, on the Government of Myanmar to put its people's lives first. It must do all that it can to prevent the disaster from becoming even more serious."

The UN refugee agency announced today that more than 40 tons of its shelter supplies, including plastic sheets, blankets, kitchen sets and tents, have reached Yangon, Myanmar's largest city in the past 24 hours.

The agency immediately handed the items, expected to benefit 10,000 people, over to non-governmental and community-based organizations to be distributed in the hardest-hit areas of Yangon and the Irrawaddy delta.

Meanwhile, the UN World Food Programme has sent more than 360 metric tons of food aid, of which 175 tons has been distributed, while the N World Health Organisation has flown in medical supplies for tens of thousands of people and is monitoring for communicable disease outbreaks in the wake of the 2 May cyclone.

The agency said that while diarrhoea and dysentery cases have been reported, there have been no confirmed cases of cholera.

© NewsRoom 2008