The World Health Organization said the Myanmar earthquake was a top-level emergency as it urgently sought $8 million to save lives and prevent disease outbreaks over the next 30 days.

With the earthquake coming on top of years of devastating conflict and repression, the displacement of more than 3.5 million people, famine, poverty, and economic collapse, it is, as Andrews says, “a disaster on top of a disaster.”

A powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake turned high-rise buildings to rubble and sent people rushing out of their homes in Myanmar and Thailand on Friday.At least 1,700 have been killed, 3,400 people have been injured and 300 are missing in Myanmar,

Myanmar’s economy is in ruins, its education and health systems are a mess and the poverty rate has doubled since the junta’s takeover. About 20 million people — more than a third of the population — were already projected to need some form of humanitarian assistance this year.

Rescuers freed a woman from the ruins of a hotel in Myanmar, officials said on Monday, a glimmer of hope three days after a massive earthquake that killed around 2,000 as searchers in Myanmar and Thailand raced against time to find more survivors.

While China, Russia and other nations have rushed emergency response teams to the devastated country, the U.S., once a leader in foreign aid, has been slow to act.

Hopes were fading of finding more survivors in the rubble of Mandalay, where some residents spent a third night sleeping in the open after a massive earthquake killed at least 1,700 people in Myanmar and neighbouring Thailand.