The United Nations Children’s Fund has confirmed a case of measles in Indonesia’s tsunami-devastated province of Aceh as torrential rain across the region raised fears there could be an outbreak of dysentery.

UNICEF Communications Officer John Budd said on Tuesday that preventing the spread of dysentery - diarrhoea containing blood - had become a priority in Aceh, where most of Indonesia’s 104,000 deaths from the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami occurred.

He said aid agencies were moving quickly to put portable sanitation in place at makeshift shelters around Aceh that are housing thousands of the estimated 600,000 people made homeless when the killer waves crashed ashore after the magnitude 9 quake.

The tsunami has killed at least 156,000 people around the Indian Ocean rim.

Budd said one case of measles had been confirmed near Aceh’s capital of Banda Aceh, while a second case at Bireuen - 150 km (94 miles) southeast of the city - was still being investigated. A third reported case at Meulaboh was not measles.

“There have been no signs of an epidemic but we treat this very seriously. Measles is a major worry for us,” Budd told Reuters.

He said UNICEF and the Indonesian government had immediately vaccinated 1,000 children in the area surrounding the confirmed case, while a broader programme was underway to immunise 575,000 children in the province.