She is eagerly anticipating the next rains so she can have clean water for her three young grandchildren, while all around her fellow villagers succumb to sickness, and occasionally to death.

For food, the children are sharing three packets of dried sunflower seeds, their only meal until their father returns from across the swollen Mhaw Win river, which he has been criss-crossing using a rickety boat in search of elusive aid for nearly three weeks now.

'We have no money. We have no food, no water, no shelter. Just a portion of this house that will also soon fall down,' 61-year-old Madam Khin told AFP.

'I have not heard the children laugh' in weeks, she said, looking at the thick mud which coats much of Angu, one of many small hamlets and villages on the network of river channels that snake out of the Irrawaddy delta.

The delta bore the brunt when Cyclone Nargis struck on May3, instantly killing more than 20 people in Angu alone, while dozens have since fallen ill with coughs, colds and diarrhoea, as vital aid fails to reach the survivors.

Nearly all the 700 villagers of Angu, a farming and fishing community, are in a state of shock, many of them just staring blankly into space or lying motionless in makeshift tents which they share with farm animals and pets.

The ruling junta has said more than 133,000 people died or went missing in the cyclone.

Aid agencies say 2.4million people are in need of food, medicine and shelter, and many live in tents or along the roadside.

The United Nations estimates that about 60per cent of them still have no foreign aid, and despite some easing of restrictions, the junta is under fire for its continued hampering of the flow of supplies to the worst-hit delta region.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates warned at the weekend that unless the military regime changed its approach, more people would die.

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders has said that people are increasingly at risk of respiratory diseases as the monsoon rains arrive.

Madam Khin said the villagers had tried to cross the river to the nearest port town to seek official help, with little luck.

Despite boasts from the junta that it has been systematically sending aid to desperate survivors 'no one has come to help us', she said.

'My son has been looking for food for a long time. The government has told us to wait. But people are sick.'

Nearby, farmer Hla Tang, 55, gathers scrap wood. His cancer-stricken wife died at the height of Nargis, and her remains were washed away by the floodwaters.

His five children have been feverish and he has no access to any medication.

Yesterday, the ruling junta denied any delays in distributing cyclone aid, even though for the first three weeks after the storm, Myanmar stonewalled international efforts to deliver aid.

It yielded only after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon paid a personal visit to junta leader Than Shwe.

But, even then, the UN said, the operation to help survivors was still moving too slowly one month after the deadly storm.

World Food Programme spokesman Paul Risley said its first helicopter to arrive in Yangon on May22 made its first trip to the delta only on Monday.

'This is inhumane,' said Mr Thin, a Myanmar volunteer providing aid to the stricken.

'The Irrawaddy has for generations been the lifeblood of this country and villages there have provided us with food. Why are the survivors now being made to suffer?'

Meanwhile, Asean has deployed its Emergency Rapid Assessment Team to assess Myanmar's aid needs.

It will present an initial report in about three weeks but will not complete its work until mid-July, Asean Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan said yesterday.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE