Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Aid operations in the 12 Indian Ocean countries hit by the Dec. 26 tsunami that left more than 280,000 people killed or missing have prevented a ``second wave of deaths'' from disease, the United Nations said.

``In spite of monumental obstacles, no roads, few air strips, no ports and torrential rains, bad weather throughout, we believe we succeeded in abating this second wave of deaths,'' UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said yesterday in New York, according to the UN Web site. ``There is no major group, no major community of affected people that has not received life-saving assistance.''

There are pockets of Aceh province in Indonesia, the area closest to the magnitude-9 earthquake that created the tsunami, and Somalia in northeast Africa, where access problems persist, Egeland said in an assessment one-month after the disaster.

Indonesia, where 226,780 people were killed or are missing, will need $4.5 billion to rebuild Aceh and North Sumatra provinces, the government has said. Sri Lanka, where more than 30,000 people died, wants $1.8 billion in international aid to rebuild. Countries have pledged $775 million out of the $997 million sought by the UN in its appeal, Egeland said.

Returning to School

The UN's assessments in Aceh and North Sumatra show no significant rise in the malnutrition rate or any significant outbreak of disease, Egeland said. About 1.2 million people are receiving food aid, a figure that may rise to 2 million people in the region, he said. An estimated 60,000 children returned to schools in Aceh and Sumatra yesterday, he said.

The aid operation resulted in a ``bigger and more effective partnership with military forces'' in the region that provided helicopters, aircraft, naval vessels, search and rescue teams and units on the ground to deliver supplies, Egeland said.

``We are starting now the new phase,'' Egeland said. ``The recovery and rehabilitation phase.''

Aid agencies working in the 12 countries hit by the tsunami often don't consult the victims enough to provide them with the appropriate help, the relief organization Oxfam said in a report released yesterday. As an example, Oxfam said that some of the house rebuilding programs in Sri Lanka are inappropriate because of a lack of coordination.

Oxfam called on governments to transfer all the aid they pledged. Only about half of the aid promised after the UN's call on Jan. 6 has arrived so far, Oxfam said.

Egeland said the UN has received $200 million, or about a quarter, of the amount pledged.

Indonesia Toll

Indonesia's toll of dead and missing declined slightly as more people were found, the National Information Agency said in a faxed statement today, citing figures from the government relief agency operating in Aceh. The figure includes 99,031 people buried, an increase from yesterday's count of 97,396, and 127,749 missing or unaccounted for, from 132,197 previously.

The towns of Calang, Lamno and Teunom in Aceh are ``still not getting enough aid because coastal roads have been destroyed,'' Heather Hill, an aid worker with the World Food Program, said yesterday in a telephone interview from Banda Aceh, the capital of the province.

Hundreds of bodies are still being pulled out of the rubble each day in Banda Aceh alone, said Jose Rizal, a doctor with the Jakarta-based aid organization Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, or Mer-C. He was speaking yesterday in a telephone interview in Jakarta, after visiting the town of Leupung in the northern part of Aceh. There are only about 1,000 people left in Leupung out of an estimated 24,000 population before the tsunami, he said.

The Health Ministry yesterday said there are more than 622,762 people displaced after the disaster using its own figures. The National Information Agency today put the number of displaced people in Aceh province at 417,124. It didn't provide figures for North Sumatra province.

To contact the reporters on this story: Soraya Permatasari in Jakarta at soraya@bloomberg.net; Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomnberg.net

Last Updated: January 26, 2005 21:21 EST