While faith is helping Sri Lankans cope with the tsunami disaster, fear is hurting the south Asian nation's population.

In Beruwala, on Sri Lanka's southwest coast, about one-third the population has diarrhea, CTV's Lisa LaFlamme said Monday. But people are afraid to return to the local hospital for treatment -- a hospital which a few days ago had been a morgue for 1,400 people.

"We sent an announcement to the villagers: Not to worry, bodies cannot transmit infections," Dr. Jayalath Mudiyansela told CTV News.

The diarrhea is being caused by contaminated well water. Water purification systems that can provide clean water for 10,000 people per day have just arrived in Beruwala.

Canada's DART team, a specialized unit for providing disaster relief, including water purification, is scheduled to depart for Sri Lanka on Thursday.

In another example where fear is harming, fisherman who have ventured back onto the ocean say they can't sell their catch. Local people don't want to buy, "fearing that the fish have been feasting on lost loved ones in the ocean," LaFlamme said.

However, many fishermen haven't returned to the water, either out fear or because their boats were destroyed. The BBC reported that 10 of the country's 12 fishing co-operatives have been ruined.

Slow aid delivery is another major problem, particularly in the northern parts which are too remote or ravaged to reach.

Rupisina Rodrigo lost five tugs to the tsunamis. However, he has four mouths to feed and the government has told him financial aid could be six months away.

"How can I wait six months?" he asked, standing by one of his ruined tugs. "No money. No water. No food. What about my children going to school?"

Faith, unity

Sri Lanka has been wracked by civil war for 20 years. The Tamil minority seeks a largely independent homeland; a notion resisted by the Sinhalese majority. But the disaster has helped set aside divisions.

"It's united families that were fighting," Father Rohan Di Zoysay of the Infant Jesus Church told CTV News. "There are no boundaries now."

In Toronto on Monday, Prime Minister Paul Martin told Tamils from the city's Sri Lankan community that Canadian aid would be distributed equitably in Sri Lanka.

Churches are piled high with donations and mosques and temples are serving as primitive refugee camps.

Religious leaders in this country of 20 million are "reinforcing the importance of giving alms to the poor," LaFlamme said.

Water is being taken to Buddhist monks for blessing before being brought back home to be sprinkled on the land, she said.

Casualties: human and other

The toll as of Monday in Sri Lanka is:

• 30,196 dead (estimated to rise to 35,000)
• Nearly 4,000 missing
• Nearly 16,000 injured
• Nearly one million people displaced

But officials are also reporting that fertile agricultural land that became contaminated with salty sea water will be rendered unusable for at least a decade.

Rehabilitation of drinking water wells contaminated with salt water could take years.

Because of the civil conflict, there are some areas of Sri Lanka that have heavy concentrations of landmines.

Although there have been efforts made to map out and remove those mines, the mines in the coastal areas may have been uprooted and scattered.

Landmines currently kill or wound about 10 to 15 Sri Lankan children per month.

However, a New York Times article reported that while the individual toll will be tragically high, the overall economy of Sri Lanka shouldn't be that badly damaged.

Tourism accounts for about two per cent of Sri Lanka's economy. Fishing accounts for roughly four per cent.

A major contributor to Sri Lanka's economy is the money sent home by those citizens who work abroad.

Many of those work in the Middle East, and one man glumly predicted that wages there would go down as more Sri Lankans look for work outside their battered country.

With a report from CTV's Lisa LaFlamme and files from The Associated Press