WHO rushes experts to quake-hit China

Experts, medical supplies and equipment reaches to China amid increasing fears of disease outbreaks more than a week after the devastating earthquake.

The World Health Organisation said Thursday it was rushing experts, medical supplies and equipment to China amid increasing fears of disease outbreaks more than a week after the devastating earthquake.

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The medical supplies will help treat 130,000 people, the UN body said, while the equipment will help ensure clean drinking water and proper sanitation -- vital for controlling any outbreak.

The experts will help in rebuilding health care services damaged by the 8.0-magnitude earthquake on May 12, which has killed more than 51,000 people in southwest China.

An epidemiologist has been sent to assist in disease surveillance control, the WHO said in a statement.

"WHO has already identified that the key health issue in the earthquake's aftermath is to prevent and control communicable disease outbreaks," WHO official Eric Laroche said.

"But the longer-term challenge is how to best rebuild its damaged health infrastructure."

The organisation said that a small boost in construction funding would be enough to enable health facilities to withstand natural disasters like earthquakes, at a time when their services would be the most needed.

China has already cremated or buried 80 percent of the bodies, the civil affairs ministry said Tuesday, but a lot of animal and human corpses still remain out in the open or under rubble.

The equipment provided by the WHO includes 5,000 chlorine disinfection tablets, drinking-water treatment units and mobile toilets.

The organisation said it and other UN agencies were preparing to send further medical supplies and emergency equipment requested by the Chinese government.