Relief teams poured into disaster-hit Central America yesterday amid concern that another tragedy could be looming as the huge number of dead bodies increased the risk of epidemics.
By yesterday morning, more than a week after the passage of Hurricane Mitch, about 11,500 bodies had been counted throughout the region. But with an estimated 14,000 people still missing, the toll was almost certain to increase, even if outbreaks of epidemics are averted.
But fear of disease was high as bodies lay on the ground or floated in rivers, and sanitary conditions deteriorated amid severe shortages of clean water and lack of basic infrastructure. The large number of people gathering in shelters - some 2.8 million have been made homeless - further increased the risk.
In Nicaragua authorities reported the first 21 cases of cholera and 32 cases of dengue fever. Warning people to avoid any contact with uncollected bodies, the Nicaraguan Health Minister, Ms Martha Macoy, said authorities sealed off the area around Posoltega, where more than 2,000 people were killed in a single massive landslide on October 30th.
"We hope to complete the task of incinerating bodies as soon as possible, but it is extremely difficult to get to them and excavate, as there are areas that continue to sink. Doctors will have to wait until the soil dries," she said.
In many areas the stench of death and the sight of vultures awaited rescue workers who faced the task of collecting bodies bloated by the floods or dismembered by landslides caused by Hurricane Mitch.
With the final death toll likely to exceed 12,000, the storm has been described as the deadliest in the Atlantic basin in more than two centuries, after a 1780 hurricane that led to 22,000 deaths. The mounting disaster in a region already struggling against rampant poverty has galvanised the international community into providing well over $100 million in aid and dispatching hundreds of emergency personnel to Central America.
Planeloads of food, personnel and rescue dogs were deployed across the region, arriving from Europe, Latin America and the United States.
Britain yesterday sent two more Royal Navy ships to help with humanitarian relief operations, stressing that saving lives remained its priority. But asked if Britain could not do more to ease Nicaragua's or Honduras's financial situation by offering debt relief, the International Development Secretary, Ms Clare Short, said such action took too long to be effective in the short term.
"In the middle of a disaster when people have to be pulled out of the mud and we've got to stop cholera and hunger spreading, [debt relief] is an irrelevance," Ms Short told BBC Radio. "Nicaragua is on its way to debt relief and we support that but it has to be internationally co-ordinated," she added.
But the Conservative Party attacked Ms Short for complacency and urged the International Monetary Fund and donor countries to allow hurricane-devastated countries such as Nicaragua and Honduras to suspend their debt repayments.
Mr Gary Streeter, Conservative spokesman on international development, said both countries made total debt repayments of more than £1 million a day. "Out of respect for the scale of this catastrophe, the donor nations and the International Monetary Fund should suspend these repayments without delay and review the matter once the immediate humanitarian crisis has passed," Mr Streeter said.
The Catholic Church in Honduras and the opposition Sandinista party in Nicaragua have asked creditors to cancel both countries' estimated $10 billion in foreign debt.