More tremors as tsunami survivors face health crisis

As world leaders gathered today to co-ordinate more than €2.8bn in tsunami relief, doctors warned of a looming catastrophe from ever-more serious health crises – gangrenous wounds that require limb amputations, scores of children with diarrhoea, pneumonia caused by exposure to dirty water.

The World Health Organisation said that if basic needs – particularly access to safe drinking water – were not restored by the end of this week, infectious diseases could kill 150,000 people – as many as were killed by the massive earthquake and giant waves that crashed ashore in Asia and Africa on Boxing Day.

Indonesia was the worst affected by the disaster that ravaged 11 countries - including Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.

The first patients turning up at hospitals and makeshift clinics in Indonesia’s hard-hit Aceh province after the disaster had mostly scrapes, bruises and broken bones. Now, doctors say they were treating more serious problems.

Meanwhile, a powerful 6.2-magnitude aftershock shook the provincial capital Banda Aceh after dawn today. Many residents panicked and fled into the streets fearing their homes might collapse, but there were no reports of fresh casualties.

The tremor, plus a 5.6-magnitude quake last night even sent grinding, grumbling noises through the 90,000-ton US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln , which is part of the US relief effort.

In Jakarta, world leaders met to figure out the best way to spend more than €2.8bn in aid and to discuss setting up an Indian Ocean tsunami warning system.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for more aid to be sent immediately to the affected areas.

“Whole communities have disappeared,” he said. ”Millions in Asia, Africa, and even in far away countries, are suffering unimaginable trauma and psychological wounds that will take a long time to heal. Families have been torn apart.”

In Thailand, where people normally shun the help of mental health professionals, many were seeking counselling to deal with anxiety, insomnia and flashbacks, said Dr Taweesin Visanuyothin of the Health Ministry.

In hard-hit Sri Lanka, newspapers printed letters from worried schoolchildren.

“I love the sea very much, but now I don’t like it. Oh! Tsunami don’t come back again,” wrote Gathmini Vithanage, a third grade student in Galle. She said her family was saved but lost everything.

In Aceh, dangerous infections were sneaking into superficial wounds, said the WHO’s Dr. Ronald Waldman. Pneumonia has also emerged as a significant illness, caused by exposure to dirty water during the tsunami, he said.

“Five million people have been severely affected by the tsunamis,” said WHO Director-General Dr Lee Jong-wook. ”We now estimate that as many as 150,000 people are at extreme risk, if a major disease outbreak in the affected areas occurs.”

As international aid poured into Muslim Indonesia, some radical Islamic groups were sending men into Aceh – perhaps to stir up sentiment against US and Australian troops there, a terrorism expert said.

“They appear to see their role not only as helping victims, but as guarding against ’kafir’ – infidel – influence,” said Sidney Jones, Southeast Asia project director for the International Crisis Group.

Dozens of trucks were rumbling out of the airport at Banda Aceh, loaded down with drinking water, instant noodles and other aid. American helicopters clattered overhead rushing food to devastated villages on Sumatra’s west coast. Australian choppers were landing at the airport with scores of injured.

Around the city, aid workers, with masks covering their faces to try to ward off the stench of rotting corpses, were picking up bodies and dumping them in trucks to carry them to quickly dug mass graves. Many of the bodies are being buried without being identified or counted.

On some houses are signs that read, “There are bodies,” and arrows pointing to where corpses lay buried under rubble.

In a rare piece of happy news, an Indonesian tsunami survivor rescued after five days at sea had another reason to celebrate. She’ll have her first baby in less than six months.

“I am happy and thankful,” said 24-year-old Malawati, who was recovering in a northern Malaysian hospital after being plucked from shark-infested waters last week. Her husband was swept out with her, but vanished.