In terms of providing help to build more permanent shelter for families whose homes were totally destroyed, the IFRC is only able to support 700 out of target number of 4,000 families.

Compared with other natural disasters of a similar scale, the donor response to Bopha has been muted, despite the Philippine government's appeal for international assistance.

Even though it ranks as one of the most disaster-prone countries in Asia, the Philippines is widely perceived by donors as a middle-income country, less deserving of humanitarian assistance than some of its neighbors.

The global financial crisis has also put the squeeze on humanitarian aid budgets and impacted levels of public giving to disasters overseas.

Bopha didn't get much traction in the international media. Competing against Syria for the headlines, the story appeared to drop off TV screens within days.

With scant media coverage, the job of NGO fundraisers was made even more difficult. Barely any British NGOs launched public appeals in the full knowledge that levels of public sympathy just weren't high enough. But if a category 5 super typhoon -- the largest on the scale -- does not warrant donor attention the future looks very bleak.

Bamforth takes a hard line on the indifference shown by the international community to the disaster.

"The paradox is that while donors view the Philippines as more developed and less deserving, when a disaster like Bopha strikes, those development gains become very fragile as people's levels of vulnerability increase so dramatically," he said.

Mindanao is one of the poorest regions of the country. Development has lagged behind other parts of the country, hindered in part by various long running insurgencies spanning four decades which have led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.

It has been the rural poor who have been hit hardest by Bopha. Areas such as Compostela Valley and Davao are the fruit bowl of the country exporting thousands of tons of bananas each year, but overnight the commercial plantations were decimated and thousands of workers lost their livelihoods.

One worrying aspect of the social and economic impact of the losses inflicted by Bopha has been the increasing numbers of people seeking work overseas.

"Recruiters" have begun to appear in some villages in Davao Oriental, targeting women to work as domestic help in the Middle East. Having lost much of their source of income as well as their major family asset -- their house -- many are prepared to face the risks and leave behind their children to support their families from afar.

With no work, 63-year-old Rodrigo Palaga spends his days salvaging bits of debris to patch up his battered home in San Roque, New Bataan. But just as he fixed the corrugated iron roof, a wave of fresh flooding caused by heavy rains a week ago have left the shell of his home covered in a layer of stinking mud.

With no running water since the typhoon, his daughter has no option but to bath their grandchild in bottled mineral water donated by an aid agency.

As the house is still uninhabitable, at night the family of six sleeps in a tent at the bottom of his land made from a tarpaulin distributed by the Red Cross.

"We worry that the floods will come again, the children wake at the slightest sound outside," he said. "We have been given some food supplies and household items but what I really need is plywood and tools to fix up the house."

There is no disputing that emergency relief is certainly needed by families such as Rodrigo's. But without support in all sectors, in particular shelter and livelihoods, already fragile communities will be left highly vulnerable to future disaster events and their situation will only keep deteriorating with the next storm season.

For Bamforth, the priority is to provide households with the tools, materials and know-how to build back better.

"Unfortunately we are seeing the opposite situation," he said. Most NGO's are operating skeleton teams in the field and the funding gap has meant that humanitarian standards are being compromised. At the moment people might receive a tarpaulin and a piece of roof sheeting and are simply told 'that's it'."