Above: Soldiers clear debris from a collapsed building in the earthquake-hit area of Shang Er, Sichuan province, May 22, 2008.
REUTERS/Nicky Loh
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More than 80,000 people are dead or missing from China's worst earthquake in decades, the government said on Thursday, as concerns rose that disease, the rainy season and aftershocks could bring yet more pain.
Previously, authorities had said they expected the final death toll to exceed 50,000.
Ten days after the magnitude 7.9 quake rocked the mountainous southwest of the country, relief efforts focused on the 5 million homeless and the millions of others facing disease and possible "secondary disasters".
The government implored the international community to provide more relief aid, saying they needed more than 3 million tents and that just 400,000 had so far reached the disaster zone.
As a measure of the urgency, Chinese President Hu Jintao made a personal visit to tent producers in the wealthy eastern province of Zhejiang to chivvy them on.
"To have enough tents is an urgent task for us," Hu said.
Hospitals in Sichuan province were overwhelmed by the nearly 300,000 hurt, prompting the government to send extra trains to ferry the injured to other parts of the country, state media said. Convoys of ambulances also carried the injured out.
Rain and aftershocks have exacerbated the dangers faced by more than 100,000 troops assisting in the relief effort.
"There have been constant aftershocks and the rainy season starts in June ... the earthquake has loosened the mountains," said Yun Xiaosu, Vice Minister of Land and Resources.
"It is very likely to cause frequent geological disasters and to once again bring major losses to the quake area."
Engineers are also monitoring more than 30 new lakes formed by landslides into river valleys, worried they could burst causing flashfloods into towns and tent cities.
PLAGUE, MENINGITIS
More than 5,000 health workers have fanned out to disinfect the hundreds of wrecked villages, and doctors and nurses are stationed round the clock in refugee camps.
"We are most worried about plague, so environmental hygiene is of top importance. Such a huge movement of people inevitably means that all sorts of viruses and bacteria move with them. We are also afraid of meningitis," a health official in Mianyang told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Plague is carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas. Meningitis, an inflammation of membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, is caused by bacteria and viruses. It can be fatal without prompt treatment.
More than 20,000 survivors are packed into the Jiujiang Sports Stadium in Mianyang city, about a two-hour drive from Sichuan provincial capital Chengdu.
The government ordered the urgent shipment of millions of doses of hepatitis, encephalitis, hemorrhagic fever and cholera vaccines to the area, state media reported.
"LONG AND ARDUOUS TASK"
Government figures showed the number of dead on Thursday exceeded 51,000, an increase of 10,000 on the previous day's toll. It said more than 29,000 were still missing.
The possibility was raised that U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon might visit Sichuan after his trip to cyclone-struck Myanmar.
Meanwhile, Premier Wen Jiabao returned to the wrecked county of Beichuan, where two-thirds of the population were killed.
"It will be a long and arduous task for us to relocate the people and reconstruct the region," Wen said, according to state television.
Local authorities plan to rebuild the Beichuan county seat at a new site in Anxian county, according to a preliminary plan yet to be approved by government.
"Safety is the top priority in selecting a new location and reconstruction," Xinhua news agency quoted Beichuan's Communist Party chief, Song Ming, as saying.
"We plan to build a monument and a memorial to commemorate the quake victims on the previous location."
Even as rescuers pulled more bodies from the rubble of what was a primary school in Yingxiu, workers set off explosives in other parts of the town to clear the debris and engineers and soldiers worked on building a temporary bridge.
Residents picked through the rubble of their homes.
Liu Suqing, 33, said she would not leave the town until her 8-year-old son had been found. "We're still waiting for them to pull out his body. There are many still buried under the rubble."
Source: Reuters
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