"Message is we're prepared and we're ready," said William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs.

No outbreaks of disease have been reported so far, but conditions created by the December 26 tsunamis were a natural breeding ground for a host of potentially deadly diseases, Winkenwerder warned.

The US military is assembling field hospitals that were used in Iraq and is prepared to fly or ship them to stricken areas if countries ask for them.

Some of the units are small enough to fit on a single C-130 aircraft. Larger 25-bed field hospitals require two C-17 transport aircraft to be moved.

Winkenwerder said the US military could provide medical personnel to staff them, although he said local medical personnel might be better suited to run them because of language and cultural barriers that might otherwise arise.

Pentagon officials were near a decision on whether to deploy the USNS Mercy, a San Diego-based ship with a 1,000 hospital bed capacity and a dozen operating rooms. It was last deployed for the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2003.

"We're looking very carefully at deploying Mercy. In fact, we've got her on sea trials today to make sure that she's ready to go," said Admiral Thomas Fargo, head of the US Pacific Command.

Fargo said the navy was looking at inviting private relief organizations to staff the ship with medical personnel and others providing humanitarian assistance.

"If we do deploy that asset, it's a major capability, but we want to do it in a way that we, again, work together with the host nations and with non-governmental organizations," Winkenwerder said. "We're going to do it in an innovative way."

He said it would take the ship about three weeks to reach the Indian Ocean.

The Pentagon also is sending between 100 and 150 military personnel with an expertise in forensics and mortuary affairs to help local authorities dispose of the dead, the number of which is now nearing 150,000.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.