THE Indian Ocean tsunami caused damage across thousands of miles. It has affected many millions of lives. The true death toll might never be known.

By last night it had risen to more than 125,000, grimly inflated yesterday by the discovery of some 28,000 bodies in remoter areas of Sumatra, closest to last weekend's undersea earthquake.

Even as the task of identifying the dead (in many cases a hopeless one) and burying them continued, a more daunting challenge confronted the emergency agencies. It is estimated that some five million people throughout the affected areas are at great risk because they lack clean water, food or sanitation.

Delivering relief supplies to the devastated areas where many of them wait for help is a logistical nightmare for international organisations and aid agencies. Jan Egeland, the UN's relief co-ordinator, said it would take another two or three days for the relief effort to be fully operational, by which time it might be too late for many. He conceded that little was being done at the moment. His prediction that frustration would grow was borne out in Banda Aceh, the worst affected area, yesterday. "Cars come by and throw food. The fastest get the food, the strong one wins. The elderly and the injured get nothing.

We feel like dogs, " said Usman, a 43-year-old resident of the city.

For the people who have been left with nothing by the disaster, having to fight for sustenance to survive in a cruel game played by strict Darwinian rules is an insult too far. They need to know that aid is reaching them as effectively and efficiently as possible.

So, too, do the many who have donated to the disaster appeal (Britons have given more than [pounds]25m while the government has pledged up to [pounds]50m).

The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), the body led by Mr Egeland, is responsible for bringing the global relief effort together so that each pound, or dollar, raised is used to greatest effect. It was set up in 1998 to do just that. It has an annual budget of some [pounds]44m, 11per cent of which comes from the UN's budget and the remainder in donations from member states and organisations. If the UN is a family ready to rebuild people's lives, as Kofi Annan, the secretary general, said yesterday, then Ocha should be its head.

Yet it was described two weeks ago by Hilary Benn, the international development secretary, as an organisation ripe for reform, where staff were poorly trained, there was internal strife and there were no clear means to hold donors to account.

Such criticism might, perhaps, be music to the ears of George W Bush, who rarely misses an opportunity to undermine the UN. Certainly, there are those, including Clare Short, Mr Benn's predecessor, who believe that Washington's decision to hand-pick four countries to co-ordinate the aid effort (the US, Japan, India and Australia) is another example of the world's one superpower sidelining the globe's supranational authority.

Despite the apparent difficulties, the UN must have the central role in the relief effort.

The huge complexity of the task dictates that this should be so. In Ocha's case, it has the opportunity to prove it can manage the millions pledged and the thousands of humanitarian workers in the field upon whose efforts the lives of millions now depend. Demonstrating its credentials in the coming weeks and months will be crucial to putting systems in place for the long term to deal with future disasters. For Britain and America, giving the UN its proper place would show that their motives on the international stage are not just unilateral, but can be multilateral and, crucially, charitable.