BANDA ACEH, Indonesia, Jan 23 (AFP) - A summary of the situation in the quake-affected zone of Asia.

-- THE DEATH TOLL AND THE MISSING --
The confirmed death toll around Asia was just short of 220,000 Sunday and was still expected to rise further. Among the 11 countries where deaths took place, Indonesia is the worst hit with more than 166,760 confirmed dead and more than 6,000 missing. In Sri Lanka, more than 30,000 were confirmed killed, with a further 5,565 listed as missing. The official toll in India edged up to 10,744 with 5,669 still reported missing and feared dead. And the official toll in Thailand stood at 5,373 dead and some 3,000 missing. At least 82 people were killed in the Maldives and 298 in Somalia. All told, nationals from more than 50 countries, including 20 countries in Europe, were among the dead.

-- DONATIONS AND PLEDGES --
Governments around the world outbid each other to pledge headline grabbing sums worth more than four billion dollars to the tsunami-struck region. Many of the pledges came, however, with caveats and aid experts urged governments to pay up now. At a conference in Jakarta, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said 977 million dollars was needed immediately for specific projects to help five million people across 11 nations. By Thursday 738.8 million dollars pledged had been received. Among the largest pledges, were those from Australia, Japan and Germany. In addition to government pledges, hundreds of thousands of private individuals around the world made donations worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Celebrities all over the world have also chipped in, organising charity concerts, TV shows and recording benefit records.

-- THE STATE OF THE RELIEF OPERATION --
Spurred on by frequent calls for faster action by UN relief chief Jan Egeland, aid slowly began arriving into affected areas within days of the disaster. With the help of a growing force of military and civilian personnel, the flow quickened until it outpaced the capacity of the infrastructure on the ground. Emphasising the precariousness of the operation, aid bottlenecks began appearing where there was insufficient or poorly organised manpower. In one incident at Banda Aceh's airport, air freight deliveries were backed up for a day after a plane collided with a buffalo that wandered onto the air strip. Thailand was quick to begin clearing up, with some holidaymakers returning to Phuket's beaches within a week.

-- THE HEALTH SITUATION --
Despite no reports of major outbreaks of communicable disease, the World Health Organisation advocates a five-pronged approach to health care in devastated regions, focusing on surveillance against outbreaks of disease, technical support, rehabilitating health services, medical supplies and the coordination of relief efforts. Health officials go on high alert two weeks after the disaster and medics are jetted into affected areas from all over the world. Millions of surgical kits, anti-diarrhoea medicines and water-purifying tablets are dispatched to ward off cholera, malaria, typhoid, measles, dengue fever and respiratory ailments.

-- THE TOLL ON THE CHILDREN --
Up to 1.5 million children were affected by the catastrophe, according to the United Nations Children's Fund, with tens of thousands losing one or both parents and many more left homeless and hungry. Amid the post-tsunami chaos, reports have emerged of child abductions by human-trafficking gangs, children being falsely claimed by strangers hoping for aid payouts, as well as rape and sexual abuse. In response governments tighten controls on people taking children from affected areas.

-- THE TOLL ON THE ENVIRONMENT --
Across huge swathes of tropical Asian coastline, there are scenes of environmental destruction -- large lumps of coral flung up hillsides, fishing grounds wrecked, coastal trees uprooted. Scientists found that where coral reefs and mangrove swamps had been protected in the past, they offered some cushioning to the blow of the tsunamis arriving on shore, but where they had been ripped out, the devastation was total. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has earmarked one million dollars to address immediate environmental needs in the affected region.

-- MEETINGS AND DEBT RELIEF --
After a meeting attended by world leaders in Jakarta, at which they agreed to support reconstruction efforts and the creation of a new early warning system, donors met in Geneva on January 11 at a full donor conference, where Egeland again called for aid distribution to be expedited. In light of criticism of the UN's oil-for-food programme in Iraq, outside auditors are hired to check the relief accounts. Many officials have meanwhile been visiting sites from Thailand to Aceh, Indonesia. Britain announces that the world's seven leading industrialized countries had agreed to support the suspension of debt repayment by the affected countries.

01/23/2005 13:20 GMT - AFP