With 22,500 dead and 41,000 missing, most of them from a massive storm surge that washed over the Irrawaddy delta, it is the most devastating cyclone to hit Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people died in neighbouring Bangladesh.
"Time is of the essence," Ann Veneman, Executive Director of the United Nations children's fund UNICEF, said in a statement. "In situations such as these, children are highly vulnerable to disease and hunger and they need immediate help to survive."
Aid officials estimate hundreds of thousands are homeless in the swamplands of the delta southwest of the biggest city Rangoon, which was also hard hit by last weekend's storm.
State-run Myanmar TV, the main official source for the number of casualties, on Wednesday re-broadcast Tuesday night's news bulletin. The TV station, monitored outside Burma (also known as Myanmar), reported just under 22,500 killed and 41,000 missing.
Aid groups and governments, including US President George W Bush, have urged the secretive military to relax their tight grip to allow humanitarian assistance into Myanmar, which has been ruled by the military for 46 years.
In a rare news conference on Tuesday, Information Minister Kyaw Hsan appealed for help, saying "the government needs the cooperation of the people and well-wishers from home and abroad".
LONG QUEUES
A queue of women and children holding buckets and tubs snaked around a corner in Rangoon on Wednesday, past a street market where vegetables were being sold at three times last week's prices despite government appeals to traders not to profit from the disaster.
