Aid begins winding its way to survivors in Indonesia.(Chicago Tribune)

Byline: Michael A. Lev

MEDAN, Indonesia _ The race to get aid to Indonesia's tsunami survivors slowly gathered pace Friday, while the head of the national Red Cross worried about the dead, because unless thousands of bodies are quickly recovered and buried disease could spread.

"I'm worried that cholera is coming," said Iyang Sukandar, secretary general of the Indonesian Red Cross. "Our No. 1 job is to collect bodies and bury them."

With at least 80,000 Indonesians believed to have been killed in the tidal waves that ravaged the shoreline of northwest Aceh province last Sunday, Sukandar could not guess how many bodies still lie in debris. But he indicated the time was passing to find and remove individual corpses. Relief workers will have to clear certain areas with bulldozers.

"If you tried to dig manually _ my God, it's impossible to do it one-by-one," he said.

While the threat of disease, particularly water-borne illnesses, is a major concern, medical authorities differ over the degree of threat posed by unburied bodies.

The fact that bodies were still being recovered as the emergency entered its sixth day was a testament to the unprecedented scope of the tragedy.