29 December 2004	Wednesday	16 Ziqa'ad 1425

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 28: Disease could double the death toll from the tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean region at the weekend, which has claimed 60,000 lives and counting, UN Officials said on Tuesday.

The destruction of water and sanitation systems "is causing a tremendous humanitarian disaster," UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland told reporters after meeting with ambassadors of the affected countries to coordinate relief operations for the tsunami, which struck nearly a dozen Indian Ocean nations on Sunday.

The UN World Health Organization warned that deadly diarrhoeal diseases and acute respiratory infections can be expected from contaminated water sources, and the ambassadors cited food, medicines, water purification equipment, mosquito nets and even body bags among their priority needs.

"We will need very substantive pledges," Mr Egeland said of the flash appeal that the UN will launch in the coming days, which may well be the largest ever made. "I think this is unprecedented because very many countries are involved."

He praised international assistance as immediate and generous, noting that "there are dozens of air planes air bound as we speak." Dr David Nabarro, a WHO official, asserted that it was vital to rush medical treatments and fresh water to the worst-hit countries in order to prevent a further catastrophe.

"There is certainly a chance that we could have as many dying from communicable diseases as from the tsunami," Nabarro said. "The immediate terror of the tsunami may be dwarfed by long-term suffering in the affected countries where the risk of widespread disease is very high," he said.

"The main thing we have to worry about is the lack of clean drinking water or the contamination of what water there is through leakage of sewage into distribution systems."

There is a serious risk of an explosion of malaria and dengue fever, already endemic in southeast Asia. Respiratory infections like pneumonia could also spread fast among homeless people crowded into temporary shelters.

"So our focus has to be on saving lives, preventing disease and doing all we can to ensure the rapid recovery of public health systems," Nabarro said. UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) teams, including officials from WHO and other agencies, have already rushed to many of the stricken countries, while others are on standby for deployment where needed.

WHO is mobilizing funds for local costs and emergency supplies, emergency health kits and other necessities identified during initial assessments. In an effort to mitigate the effects of similar disasters in the future, UN officials are calling for the installation of an early warning system such as already exists in the Pacific region which is considered more vulnerable to undersea earthquakes.

"Had a South Asian regional alert system been in place to warn of the impending tidal wave, many thousands of lives could have been saved," Secretary General Kofi Annan's representative on the human rights of internally displaced persons, Walter Kälin, said on Tuesday.

The disaster "illustrates the need for cooperation at the national, regional and international levels to prevent crises of internal displacement," he added, praising the broad international response and stressing the importance of international access to those displaced.

Salvano Briceno, Director of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, a UN initiative for increasing knowledge-sharing in areas of risk management, also stressed the need for an Indian Ocean early warning system like that existing in the Pacific basin. "A simple and timely message can go a long way and can mean the difference between life and death, not to mention economic survival or ruin," he said.