The response of international governments to the Asian earthquake was condemned as a disgrace by a leading charity.

Weeks after the earthquake ripped through Pakistan and India killing an estimated 80,000 people, Save the Children said the international community should hang its head in shame.

It praised the very generous response of the British public - who have pledged more than £30 million to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal - but said governments needed to increase their efforts to prevent thousands of further deaths from cold.

They have so far pledged only 131 million dollars (£75 million), a quarter of the 550 million dollars appealed for by the UN, and 60 million dollars of that has still not been delivered, the charity said.

Toby Porter, Save the Children UKs emergencies director, said: The international community should collectively hang its head in shame.

The challenges we are all facing today getting aid through to vulnerable children and their families before the snowfall were all predicted within days of the earthquake.

The message then from the UN was clear: the world needed to provide both an instant and a massive response, particularly on the financial side.

For the world to have committed such a small proportion of what the UN has asked for one month later, and with winter closing in, is a disgrace.

Aid workers say that although last years tsunami killed more people the situation for survivors of the Asia earthquake is much more desperate.

The tsunami left two million homeless. More than three million have been left homeless by the earthquake and they are struggling to survive in temperatures which already drop below freezing at night and are set to plummet further.

One month after the tsunami, 775 million dollars had been pledged to a UN appeal, more than five times what has so far been pledged to the earthquake appeal.

Save the Children is spending £4 million in the earthquake region but said that will run out in another month.

Ken Caldwell, Save the Childrens Director of International Operations, said: Governments have been much slower to release funding than after the tsunami, despite the fact that there are over 50% more people displaced and we are in a race against the weather.

Every day it is getting colder and colder, and people will not survive long in the open or in makeshift shelters. Young children are particularly vulnerable.