In all of 2003, the German chapter of Doctors without Borders collected €17.5 million in donations. During the last 10 days alone, people have wired €30 million in donations to the organization's accounts, most of it directed towards relief efforts in South Asia.

On Tuesday, the international relief group asked people to stop donating funds specifically to the catastrophe. "The willingness to contribute is enormous," said the organization's spokesman, Stephan Grosse Rueschkamp. "But we feel that the money we've already received will be enough to finance our work in South Asia." Many media outlets falsely reported that it had asked people to stop giving altogether -- a factual inaccuracy that riled it and other aid groups. Of course organizations like Doctors without Borders are happy to see so many people eager to make donations, but it also creates a serious conundrum for them: rules regulating charitable organizations stipulate that money raised for a specific crisis can only be used for related work.

Now, Doctors without Borders is asking for general donations.

"We hope that donors will trust us enough to allow the organization to determine for itself in which crises regions we should best allocate funds," Grosse Rueschkamp said. "We can't forget that there are still other crisis regions in the world and those crises have not ended: The civil war in the Sudan continues. And the people in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo still need our help," he said.

At the moment, it appears their financial needs for the current tsunami catastrophe have been met, but they'll continue to evaluate the situation as their relief efforts progress.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning aid organization has already begun its medical work in Aceh. In all, 80 of the group's international workers have arrived in the tsunami region, bringing with them 250 tons of humanitarian aid, and more workers are expected to arrive in the coming days. Together with the environmental organization Greenpeace (which has dispatched its "Rainbow Warrior" ship), the group is delivering food, fuel, mosquito nets and medicine to hard to reach areas on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. They've also set up three mobile clinics in hard hit Banda Aceh, where they can treat up to 300 patients per day.

In Sri Lanka, the organization has dispatched 38 workers and is setting up eight mobile units to treat the injured. It is also supplying 5,000 families with aid, including blankets and tents -- desperately needed in a country with an estimated 800,000 homeless. In addition, the group has shipped psychologists to aid in India, since the Indian government is handling medical aid efforts on its own.

A wave of giving

Other aid organizations in Germany and Europe have also seen a wave of giving. The German Red Cross has been inundated with donations totalling €28 million. Germany Helps, an alliance of German aid groups that pool resources during major catastrophes, has raised an impressive €22.25 million. "By the beginning of the week, we received €12 million," said Christiane Geiter, spokeswoman for the group. They also held a national telethon after the tsunami that collected €10.25 million in pledges specifically earmarked to help homeless and orphans in South Asia. Geiter said so many calls came into the switchboards that volunteers couldn't keep up.

Nevertheless, Germany Helps is still asking for donations for the tsunami victims -- and for those in other crisis areas. "What's happening in the Sudan or the Congo are catastrophes of their own. These cash-strapped regions, of course, can't be forgotten."

UN: We will hold countries accountable for pledges

Current aid pledged by 45 countries for the tsunami victims is approaching the $3 billion mark, and the United Nations has greeted the international donations as "truly overwhelming." On Wednesday, Germany increased its pledge to €500 million, making it the largest single contributor so far in the tsunami relief effort.

Jan Egeland, the UN's emergency relief coordinator, and General Secretary Kofi Annan have both expressed their hope that all the pledges will in fact be translated into material aid. Past experience, unfortunately, has shown that promises aren't always kept. In the Iranian city of Bam, completely devastated by a massive earthquake last December, the majority of the funds pledged have not yet arrived. The people of Bam are deeply frustrated and thousands still live in tents, Egeland said. In South Asia, he promised, "we will follow up and we will hold those pledging to their pledges."

Since they began asking for donations for tsunami victims last week, both Egeland and Annan have called on countries not to forget  people threatened in other parts of the world. "In seven days we've got more money in response to the tsunami crisis than we did for all the humanitarian appeals we issued in 2004," an openly frustrated Annan told US broadcaster ABC this weekend.

Last year, a lack of funds was one of the reasons cited by the UN for its inability to stop preventable deaths in large parts of Africa. "About 1,000 people die each day in eastern Congo," Egeland told reporters in New York last week. "And in the next three to four months as many people may die in eastern Congo as died in the tsunami." Worse yet, it's been happening for years.