BBC's Andrew Tighe: The nation's limited health service is unable to cope

The Honduran Public Health Minister, Marco Antonio Rosa, said that the number of people affected was growing by the day.

"The epidemics have sprung up because many cities were under water and mud," he said.

Most of the diseases are spread by contaminated water

Most of the epidemics are being spread by contaminated water and with many cities and towns still covered in mud, doctors say health conditions will get worse before they get better.

According to health officials 20,000 people have cholera, 31,000 have malaria and 208,000 have diarrhoea. Leptospirosis, a disease spread by rodents that causes liver and kidney failure, has also infected 62 people, killing four of them.

A Honduran home still covered in debris

Our Central America correspondent, Peter Greste says that many doctors predicted most of the health problems as soon as Hurricane Mitch struck, but missed leptospirosis, otherwise known as Weils disease.

He says that the rains had apparently flushed rats out of their burrows into homes where they have contaminated water supplies.

Clearing up is a slow process

Since the government has little heavy machinery, the army and about 300,000 college students are cleaning houses by hand, but it is a slow process.

The waters destroyed more than 200,000 homes, leaving 10% of Honduras' 6.1 million people homeless. The government says Mitch killed 5,657 people in Honduras.

Some 200,000 homes have been destroyed by Mitch

As the government goes about the painstaking task of providing relief supplies and in the longer term physically reconstructing the country, it has turned to computers for help.

Computers aid reconstruction

Only days before Hurricane Mitch hit the country in October the finishing touches were put to a digital atlas of the country. It was compiled by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia.

The BBC's Peter Greste: There are tremendous problems with water-borne diseases

The centre's spokeswoman, Jackie Ashby says the atlas has information on population patterns, soils, patterns of agriculture, as well as the location of towns, bridges, and roads, even village water pumps.

By superimposing satellite images taken after the disaster, she says, information on the extent of the damage can be obtained.

"They can use the model to simulate repairing or rebuilding bridges and roads in different parts of the country, and they can identify from that where it would be most important to do the repairs first of all," Ms Ashby explained.

A model based on the devastation - Jacky Ashby

But she says that analysing the areas that are most at risk is also very important, as it could help to avoid such high risk areas.

"This kind of analysis will be used to help the country re-plan where some of the population needs to be located, and where they can make a living from farming," she said.