WORLD / Asia-Pacific

UN: Quake aid 'race against time'
(AFP)
Updated: 2006-06-03 14:41

One week on, those whose homes were not flattened were picking through the rubble, looking for whatever could be salvaged and fearing that disaster could strike again.

"I still feel traumatized because one week later, we're still having tremors," said Warno, a 39-year-old schoolteacher, as he and two other men repaired the tiles ripped off his house in the village of Warung Boto.

"We all feel unsafe about sleeping inside," he said. "We need money to rebuild our house."

While two of his children are healthy, his six-year-old daughter is still vomiting and suffering from diarrhea, likely due to shock. Warno's 84-year-old father died on Friday.

At least 6,234 people were killed, some 46,000 others injured and more than 139,000 homes in Central Java and Yogyakarta provinces either damaged or completely destroyed.

"The height of the emergency phase will continue, I would expect, for another week to two weeks, and at the most be completed in a month," said the UN's Charlie Higgins, who is overseeing the relief effort in Java.

Foreign medical teams have set up field hospitals to ease the burden on local facilities, but new casualties have continued to stream in.

"A lot of new patients with quake-related injuries came here," said Sunarto from Bantul hospital. He had no immediate data available but said dozens had been admitted, most of them suffering broken bones.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said the injured who had been treated often had nowhere to go when they were discharged from hospital.

"Many patients have no homes to return to or are not prepared yet to go back to their villages," IOM physician Nenette Motus said. The group said it was trying to place people in rooming houses and small hotels.

The World Health Organization (WHO), which has warned of an increased risk of the spread of infectious diseases, on Saturday launched a surveillance system to detect any outbreaks.

Pujiono said WHO epidemiologists would follow a "rigorous procedure of interviewing and observation" in the zone.

Both Indonesian officials and aid agencies said looting of aid convoys had become a minor problem, with desperate survivors stopping trucks carrying food aid on main roads before reaching the more remote villages.

Authorities in Jakarta dispatched assessment teams to the zone to determine the exact number of dead and injured, with the social affairs ministry saying "careful site checks" were needed to verify the current toll.

New figures would be available on Sunday at the earliest, said a ministry official who identified herself as Dessy.


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