The World Health Organisation today have warning that rescuers were in a race against time to prevent the outbreak of disease among the survivors of the Asian tsunamis.

More than half a million people have been left injured and in need of medical care, and five million people have lost their homes across six nations in the unprecedented disaster.

Today, as heavy rains hampered the movement of aid in Sri Lanka, and as rescuers and international observers continued to find new scenes of devastation in Sumatra's Aceh province, where at least 94,000 people have died, fears grew that diseases like cholera and malaria would break out.

"It is a race against time," the WHO said in a report.

WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said the organisation was distributing millions of water purification tablets and has engineers in the region to help repair water and sanitation facilities.

The WHO said that pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria and skin infections had already emerged in Aceh. There were cases of gangrene among survivors with wounds exposed to polluted water. Seawater and sewage have contaminated many wells.

Wounds that might have healed cleanly if treated at once had festered, leaving many people facing amputations and disfigurement.

In the coastal town of Meulaboh, cut off from the world for a week after the tsunami struck and with an estimated 40,000 feared dead, a damaged airstrip was cleared sufficiently for use by Twin Otter aircraft, enabling medical teams to distribute bandages, dressings and painkillers.

A Singapore military medical unit which set up a treatment centre with 33 staff saw 150 patients in the first four hours, said Colonel Edwin Lou, the unit leader.

Aitor Lacomba, the Indonesian director of aid group International Rescue Committee, said: "The casualty rates in Meulaboh defy imagination. Tens of thousands need immediate assistance there." Kuwait today promised to send a mobile hospital to the stricken town.

The United Nations sent reconnaissance flights over Aceh's coastline today as efforts continued to assess the extent of the devastation.

US military helicopters have already begun to evacuate casualties, creating a new problem as local hospitals to capacity and beyond.

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