The United Nations has raised US$517 million out of the 575 million it had sought to respond to Haiti's immediate needs, a UN official told media in Haiti's quake-hit capital Port-au-Prince on Monday.

"The United Nations was the top donor with US$114 million, private donors were next with 88 million," said an official with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Other major donors were Canada with 57 million, Saudi Arabia with 50 million and Spain with 42 million.

The official said that although the headline appeal was close to fulfilling its target, appeal for specific needs have been more difficult to fulfil. The United Nations currently has only 2 percent of the nutrition funding and 18 percent of the money needed for education.

The UN has now fed 1.9 million people since the beginning of the emergency that followed a January 12 earthquake that measured 7.3 degrees on the Richter scale, another official said at the same press conference, held in the offices of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (Minustah).

Some 1.1 million of those were reached under a program that began just over 8 days ago, to deliver 25 kilogram bags of rice to households across Port-au-Prince.

Officials said that the program is working hard to prevent fraud, which has now been reported at two sites: one in Cite Soliel, a tough area of informal settlements at the edge of the city, and another in Petionville, a middle-class area in the north of Port-au-Prince. In both cases, counterfeiters printed copies of the coupons that UN officials and partners give to beneficiaries a day before they are to pick up supplies.

The OCHA spokeswoman told media the UN's top priority in coming days will be providing shelter to the estimated 1 million who have lost their homes due to the quake, which government estimates say may have killed up to 200,000 citizens.

OCHA estimates that around 50,000 people living in informal settlements in Port-au-Prince have already received some shelter supplies, either in the form of tents or in the form of tarpaulins and associated building materials.

(Xinhua News Agency February 9, 2010)