"We are in touch with physicians in Burma," Jennifer Chu said, using the name the country had before its ruling military junta changed it in 1989. "We are very interested in getting donations to help the cyclone victims effectively."

Chu, a physician specializing in pain management, said her group's intention was to "get the relief directly to the people who need it."

Through their contacts, the organization known as the Alumni Myanmar Institutes of Medicine Association, AMIMA, hopes to funnel donations directly to doctors on the ground or to the Yangon General Hospital, the one closest to the disaster, Chu said.

She was awed by the enormity of the problem.

"This is the worst cyclone in the history of Burma," she said.

She said that U Hla Myint, one of Myanmar's "most revered professors of medicine" had left the country shortly before the storm hit for a trip to Australia, and would return with a medical team.

The 700 members of the network, who have been in near-constant contact through e-mail, fear that if help does not arrive soon, another tragedy will unfold with an epidemic of diseases such as malaria, typhoid, dysentery and cholera.

"The Burmese government is unbelievable," Chu said. "Dead bodies are not getting picked up, so as physicians we can predict what will happen."

Reports say that more than 20,000 are dead and 40,000 missing from the storm that hit the southeast Asian nation Friday and Saturday. A tidal wave up to 12 feet high scoured a low-lying delta region, pushing as far as 35 miles inland.

Although offers of help are pouring in from around the world, aid is stalled in red tape as the secretive and repressive junta has been slow to release visas to foreign relief workers.

President Bush has pledged $3 million in emergency aid and has offered to send U.S. Navy units to help as part of an international relief operation.

"What remains is for the Burmese government to allow the international community to help its people," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Reuters news agency and other reporters in Washington. "It should be a simple matter. It is not a matter of politics."

The U.N. Security Council rebuffed a suggestion from France that the U.N. should invoke a "responsibility to protect" that would allow aid to enter the country without the approval of the junta.

Chu said the physicians had come together as a blogging community about a year ago. When the cyclone struck, they were quick to respond, she said.

Chu earned her medical degree in Myanmar but was not allowed to practice medicine because her mother was Chinese.

"If one parent was foreign-born, you were regarded as a foreigner and couldn't work," she said. She left her native country in the 1970s and family connections led her to Penn. She lives in Haverford with her husband and two children.

She said an account had been set up with Wachovia Bank. Send checks made out to AMIMA with "cyclone relief fund" in the memo field to Box 30157, Elkins Park, Pa. 19027-0157. Donations can also be made through a Paypal link on the Web site www.amima.net/projects4.

This article contains information from the Associated Press.