Aid agencies have prevented disease spreading through Indonesia's tsunami-stricken Aceh, but the threat remained strong, the United Nations said today.
Ms Margareta Wahlstrom, the UN special co-ordinator for the disaster, said efforts to prevent the spread of disease in Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra island where almost all Indonesia's 110,200 deaths occurred, should not be relaxed.
"There are no alarm bells ringing, but we cannot slacken our efforts. The threat is still there," Ms Wahlstrom told a news conference in Jakarta after returning from Banda Aceh, the provincial capital.
About 700,000 people were made homeless in Aceh by the December 26th earthquake in the Indian Ocean and ensuing tsunami that has killed more than 162,000 in 13 countries. Thousands of Indonesia's survivors are now living in makeshift camps.
At a large public hospital in Banda Aceh, a Belgian paediatrician said he had treated at least 13 children this week suffering from pneumonia after ingesting dirty water either during or after the tsunami.
"We have actually had two children die this Wednesday night and one yesterday of severe pneumonia," he said.
The doctor said he was surprised he had not seen any cases of cholera or dysentery, considering the lack of clean water, and raised concerns about how Indonesia would cope once the foreign medical teams had left.
But an assessment from the UN's World Health Organisation (WHO)s says the risk of large disease fatalities was fading, particularly the threat from water-borne diseases.
WHO said malaria was a key worry and the agency has started spraying areas in Aceh to kill the growing number of mosquitoes that spread the disease, which was already endemic in the region.