More than 115,000 people were dangerously crammed into makeshift centres such as schools and open-air gymnasiums across Manila, the nation's capital, and surrounding areas that were submerged in Saturday's floods.

Infections including swine flu, diarrhoea and the bacterial disease leptospirosis were at the top of the government's list of concerns, Doctor Melissa Guerrero, chief aide to the health secretary, told AFP.

"Now that you have a breakdown in your water and sanitation facilities and evacuation sites, the transmission of diseases will be faster," Guerrero said.

Stagnant water could also become breeding grounds for mosquitoes that spread dengue fever, she warned.

Saturday's disaster saw tropical storm Ketsana drop the heaviest rain in more than 40 years on Manila and neighbouring areas of Luzon island.

The nine-hour pounding left some areas of Metro Manila, a city of 12 million people, under six metres (20 feet) of water and many areas remained submerged on Monday.

The government said the death toll was at least 100 and more than 450,000 other people had been displaced.

Sanitation conditions at schools, gymnasiums and other buildings that had been turned into evacuation centres were deplorable, AFP reporters at the scene observed.

In one makeshift evacuation centre in a riverside Manila village that was inundated by the floods, about 3,000 people crowded in an open-air gymnasium, cooking and sleeping on the cold concrete floor as human faeces lay nearby.

In warm, muggy conditions, 11 bodies were kept inside coffins at the same centre, with homeless survivors resting on the concrete.

Armando Endaya, captain of Bagong Silangan village and in charge of that centre, said relief workers had yet to help them, and they were being forced to fend for themselves and rely on aid from private groups.

"We are waiting for more aid to arrive. We are trying to mobilise our own relief operations here. But we need more help," Endaya told AFP from the gymnasium, which had a roof but no walls.

Healthcare efforts have been further complicated by flooding at four hospitals, which interrupted electrical power or forced the evacuation of patients, said Health Secretary Francisco Duque.

With authorities desperately short of food, medicine, clean water and medics, various national appeals for help were launched on Monday.

The secretary-general of the Philippine National Red Cross, Gwendolyn Pang, urged doctors to volunteer their services.

On national television, she also called on the public to donate soap, shampoo and other cleaning items, as well as bottled water for drinking, to help make up "hygiene kits."

The head of the Philippine Medical Association, Rey Melchor Santos, issued similar pleas.

"They (the public) can call our office to send donations. But we want the doctors... so we can send them to the evacuation centres," he said.

Aside from the help of doctors, Santos appealed for donations of medicines and antiseptics to help fight colds, fevers and diarrhoea.

earlier related report
Philippines government faces angry backlash over floods
The Philippine government faced an angry backlash Monday over flooding that claimed at least 140 lives, with residents voicing frustration at the pace of rescue efforts.

With some people still stranded on the upper floors of their homes more than 48 hours after the flooding began, the government admitted it was not prepared for the disaster but insisted it was not to blame.

Defending the government's actions, officials repeated President Gloria Arroyo's statement that more rain fell on Manila and surrounding areas in Saturday's deluge than on New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit there in 2005.

However, for many the disaster revealed the divisions that separate the city's rich and poor, and problems with planning and development in the city.

"Why is it that rich villages get help first?" said Bobby Santillosa, head of a neighbourhood-based disaster-response team in Bagong Silangan, a low-income northern Manila neighbourhood.

The community leader saw 29 neighbours drown in the flooding sparked by tropical storm Ketsana, when more than a month of rain fell in less than nine hours.

"They were already dead when rescuers arrived," he added.

A woman who refused to give her name told AFP that the government response was too little too late, as police rescued her elderly parents from a rooftop in a poor neighbourhood near the bank of the Pasig River.

"Help was too slow coming. We've been up here since Saturday and we had not eaten anything since then," she said.

Parts of the city of 12 million people were under up to 20 feet (six metres) of water, leaving at least 140 people dead and forcing nearly half a million from their homes across Manila and surrounding provinces.

Bayani Fernando, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority chief who is responsible for flood control in the capital, said that among the major factors in the flood were poor city planning, illegal structures and simple geography.

"Our problem is we live where we should never have lived," he said.

Manila, which like most of the country lies on the Pacific typhoon belt, is bisected by the Pasig and Marikina rivers whose waters connect Manila Bay to the west with a huge lake, Laguna de Bay, to the east.

Some areas of the city lie below sea level, sit on silt and rely on pumps to keep the water out, while the eastern district of Marikina, ground zero of the disaster, is a valley surrounded by the Sierra Madre mountain range.

He said obstructions, either caused by squatters putting up illegal structures or rich landowners encroaching on land such as riverbanks that allow natural drainage, should be removed.

"If we want to stop this, we have to remove all the things that are obstructing the waters," Fernando said.

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