HANOI, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of thousands of people in Vietnamese central provinces hit by typhoon Ketsana are facing the risk of infectious diseases, local newspaper the Vietnam News reported Thursday.

    The number of people infected with diarrhea, flu, pink eyes and skin diseases is increasing in the storm-hit areas, said the newspaper. There is growing fear that the diseases may spread in the contaminated and unsanitary conditions with a shortage of clean water.

    In central province of Quang Nam, there have been 335 people infected with diarrhea, 1,300 with pink eyes, 4,200 with flu and 23,000 with skin diseases, according to the provincial health preventive center.

    In Da Nang city, the average number of people admitted to the city's general hospital for treatment of infectious diseases has reached 300 a day, ten times higher than usual, said the newspaper. District-level heath clinics in the city are overloaded with hundreds of cases of diseases.

    The diseases are threatening tens of thousands of households in central Hue city where 98 percent of wells have been contaminated due to floods caused by the typhoon.

    Provincial authorities have been sending doctors and health workers to storm-hit areas and supplying medicine to health centers in an effort to prevent the spreading of diseases.

    Local residents are being given Chloramine B, one kind of chemicals, to help them purify water contaminated by the floods, according to the newspaper.

    Typhoon Ketsana swept into Vietnam last Tuesday. It caused great casualties and property losses to 15 central and highland provinces in the country.