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.