"Out of the 174 million dollars (131 million euros), the UN has only received 44 million or 25 percent of the funds we asked for, although (the situation) is of the utmost urgency," the spokeswoman for the UN Organisation for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Elisabeth Byrs, told AFP.

"It's not moving. It's shameful that we should have so little money for an illness that currently kills in a flash because people don't have rehydration salts," she added.

Cholera can swiftly dehydrate patients without treatment for potentially deadly cases of diarrhoea.

The disease has left 3,333 people dead and infected 150,000 since it suddenly appeared in the quake and storm hit Caribbean nation last October, according to figures given by Haiti's health ministry last week.

The Pan American Health Organisation warned in November that up to 400,000 people could fall ill with cholera in a year.

Last month the United Nations had received just 20 percent of the funds.

The OCHA asked donors for extra money to deal with cholera in November as health workers rushed to halt the fast spread of the disease, nine months after a devastating earthquake left 250,000 people dead and 1.9 million displaced.

Byrs insisted there was still a need for speed and underlined that cholera could easily be treated when patients received enough care.

The funding would also help to prevent waterways being contaminated and set up more treatment centres in rural areas.

By last month, donors had provided just over one billion of the 1.5 billion dollars the UN asked for in its separate, earlier, appeal for quake relief and reconstruction in Haiti, Byrs said.

In 2011, the world body will be seeking an additional 906 million dollars to help Haiti, this time including money to deal with cholera, she added.

earlier related report
Shelling peas to survive in squalid Haiti camp
Port-Au-Prince (AFP) Jan 6, 2011 - From dawn to dusk, surrounded by her grown children and small grandchildren, Altagrace Reaud shells the peas which have become her means of providing for the 13 mouths she has to feed.

Displaced for the past year by an earthquake that killed more than 220,000 people and left much of this city in shambles, the 59-year-old Haitian grandmother has the challenging task of feeding five grown children and eight grandchildren from her meager roadside sales.

"Since January 12, I'm the one who takes care of everything, who works, who has credit," said the woman, whose customers are Haitians just as desperate as she.

Reaud sells her peas for about one dollar per 100 grams (3.5 ounces), which gives her an income of about 30 dollars per week.

She sometimes goes to the market to purchase fruits and vegetables, which she can then resell in the neighborhood.

On the rare occasions when Reaud is flush, she can even engage in a bit of creative commerce.

"When I have money, I buy manioc, which I use to make griddle cakes," she said.

"I also sell peas, or mangoes if they are in season, and I resell everything I can."

Reaud's entire clan huddles with her in the cramped Toussine homeless camp in Port-au-Prince, under a rickety shelter of blue plastic tarps.

Before the massive earthquake that devastated much of Haiti's capital city, the matriarch lived in a humble yet solid house. But the dwelling was reduced to rubble in the disaster one year ago.

Three walls of the structure are still standing, but it is impossible to reoccupy the dwelling in its current state, without a roof and a floor.

"The owners want me to pay for the rebuilding, but I don't have any money," she said in Creole.

Miraculously, a neighboring shack belonging to Reaud's brother remained standing after the quake, although the dwelling is hardly what one would call luxurious: there is a mattress on the floor, and no doors or windows.

More than half a million people have been able to leave Haiti's homeless camps since mid-year, when they sheltered some 1.5 million people, according to the International Organization for Migration, which monitors the plight of uprooted populations around the world.

There are still around a million Haitian refugees like Renaud housed in the makeshift tents, about one-tenth of the entire population of this impoverished country.

The 14 members of Reaud's family migrated from place to place before landing, like thousands of other destitute Haitians, in the Toussine camp, where they have lived for the past several weeks.

When sales of her produce are off, and when circumstances turn really desperate, Reaud and her family members are reduced to begging.

"We live by the grace of God," said one young woman from the clan, Marie-Nadege, 26, holding a bare-bottomed baby on her lap.

"When you have, you eat," Marie-Nadege said. "When you don't, you beg."

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