Muzaffarabad, Pakistan ? The top U.N. relief coordinator warned Thursday that bold initiatives like the Berlin Airlift are needed to save as many as 3 million people left homeless by the South Asian earthquake as winter approaches in the Himalayas.

The World Health Organization, meanwhile, reported three quake survivors died of tetanus, reinforcing fears that disease and infected injuries could drive the 79,000 death toll far higher.

Jan Egeland, the U.N. relief coordinator, appealed to NATO and other potential donors to step in with an army of helicopters to fly in relief supplies and evacuate perhaps hundreds of thousands of people.

“The world is not doing enough,” Egeland said.

He called for “a second Berlin air bridge” – nonstop flights reminiscent of the U.S. and British airlift of essential supplies into West Berlin in the late 1940s when Soviet troops blocked the city’s road links to the West for nearly 11 months. At one point, planes landed in West Berlin at the rate of one a minute.

“We thought that the tsunami was as bad as it could get. This is worse,” Egeland said. “The race against the clock is also like no other one.”

NATO was expected to approve today the dispatch of medics and hundreds of military engineers to clear roads and help reconstruction. However, commanders said it would be hard to muster enough of the helicopters needed for flying in remote mountain areas to mount the campaign envisioned by Egeland.

Helicopters loaded with supplies and soldiers on foot fanned out from the shattered city of Muzaffarabad in an attempt to get help to remote villages damaged in the Oct. 8 tremor.