The death toll following Saturday's 7.8 earthquake that was felt in Nepal, India and China has surpassed 4,000, according to the Associated Press.
The current death toll does not take into account numerous villages and areas that rescue workers have not been able to reach yet, most of which are in remote areas to begin with.
Aftershocks, which can go on for weeks following earthquakes, are not helping the relief efforts. Survivors are afraid to go into their already damaged homes because of potential aftershocks completely knocking them down, the AP reported.
BBC News reports that 200 climbers have been rescued on Mount Everest, where an avalanche occurred following the earthquake. According to The New York Times, 18 died on the mountain while dozens were gravely injured.
One climber who survived the avalanche, Alan Arnette, said on his personal blog that his team's camping area was completely destroyed.
"The camp looks like it was hit by a tornado," he said in an audio recording on the site. "Everything is smashed directly to the ground."
The main base camp at the foot of Mount Everest is also uninhabitable.
Willie Benegas, who runs the United States-based Benegas Brothers Expeditions, explained to the NY Times how hard it has been to try and quickly rebuild the base camp so volunteers can try and locate and help potential survivors.
"It's a catastrophe," he said. "You make a decision for the trauma that you see."
According to multiple reports, the biggest concern in Nepal has been getting resources to and giving proper medical treatment to survivors.
CBS News reports that "shelter, fuel, food, medicine, power, news, workers -- Nepal's earthquake-hit capital was short on everything Monday."
Udav Prashad Timalsina, the top official for the Gorkha district of Nepal, told CBS that people are not getting the basic necessities of food and shelter.
"There are people who are not getting food and shelter. I've had reports of villages where 70 percent of the houses have been destroyed," he said.
Michio Kaku, a physics professor at City College of New York, told CBS that the world should prepare for a "health crisis of unparalleled proportions" in Nepal.
He also noted that the last big earthquake in the region that occurred 81 years ago killed more than double the current death toll in Nepal.
"Scientists can go back 100 years, in terms of earthquake activity, and we find that roughly (every) 80 years there is a big one," he explained. "The last one was 81 years ago and it killed 10,000 people."
Kaku believes that the reason Saturday's earthquake was so devastating is because it was a "shallow quake," meaning it did not occur far from the earth's surface.
"The center of the energy was released, about 10 hydrogen bombs worth, five miles or so beneath the surface, which is rather shallow," Kaku said. "If it was much deeper into the earth, the effect of it would've been minimal. Because it was so close to the surface of the earth, people got the brunt of the shaking."
