BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Aid officials said today that the tsunami claimed the people most needed now in Indonesia's worst-hit province - with four out of five public health workers missing - while U.S. Deputy Defense Minister Paul Wolfowitz surveyed Sri Lanka's devastated south by helicopter.

The death toll in one of the world's worst natural disasters today stood at more than 162,000, with thousands of bodies found over the weekend in Sumatra, which was closest to the Dec. 26 magnitude-9.0 earthquake that spawned killer waves in 11 nations. Also hard hit were Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.

A U.N. conference in Kobe, Japan on Tuesday will focus on creating a tsunami warning system for southern Asia that could have averted many of the deaths.

Rebuilding the devastated public health system in Indonesia's Aceh province on Sumatra island must be a top priority and will take years, said Mark Collins, a team leader for Australia's international development agency AusAID.

"Most public health infrastructure has been seriously damaged or destroyed," Collins told a news conference in Aceh's provincial capital. "There was also the tragic loss of many trained personnel in the health sector."

Of the 400 staff who worked in the province's health department, only 82 - or about one fifth - have been accounted for. About 150 doctors are missing, he said.

There have been no major illness outbreaks, despite early fears that tainted water supplies would spur cholera. But the World Health Organization said it remains concerned over malaria spread by mosquitoes breeding in the waterlogged coasts of tsunami-hit countries.

"There is still significant risk to health. People are still drinking dirty water. There is a malaria threat," said Rob Holden, a WHO coordinator.

Hundreds of troops from Australia, Singapore, Germany and other nations are helping the relief effort in Indonesia, led by some 14,000 U.S. troops - most of whom are docked off the coast of western Sumatra island.

On Sunday, Jakarta backed away from an earlier call for troops to be out of Indonesia by March 26 - three months after the earthquake-tsunami disaster.

Meanwhile, Marine Lt. Gen. Robert Blackman, who is in charge of coordinating American relief efforts in South Asia, said the U.S. military plans to wind down its presence in Thailand and Sri Lanka over the next two weeks and focus on Indonesia's tsunami-battered Sumatra island.

Indonesia "is clearly the most challenging" of the three countries, Blackman said. "You can't minimize 130,000 deaths on the island of Sumatra."

Wolfowitz praised American troops for their efforts to aid survivors and hinted that the American operation could mean closer military ties with Indonesia.

"We need to think about how we can strengthen this newly elected democratic government, strengthen the civilian defense minister ... to help build the kind of defense institution that will ensure in the future that the Indonesian military, like our military, is a loyal function of a democratic government," said Wolfowitz, former U.S. ambassador to Jakarta.

The tsunami wasn't the deadliest catastrophe in memory - a 1970 cyclone in Bangladesh killed 300,000, and a 1976 quake in Tangshan, China, killed more than 240,000 - but it spanned 11 nations and struck a tropical band popular with tourists, making it a truly global disaster.

"You must all realize that this catastrophe is a catastrophe that we share," Prime Minister Goeran Persson of Sweden said ahead of his tour today of Thai beaches along with prime ministers of Norway and Finland.

More than 2,000 Swedes, Finns and Norwegians remain missing.

Of the 1,900 missing Swedes, about 20 percent are estimated to be 20 years old or younger. Sweden says 52 of its citizens were confirmed dead. Finland reported 15 dead and 174 missing. Norway says 12 of its citizens were killed and 77 missing.

There has been little slowdown in aid that has poured into Indonesia, with an unprecedented $4 billion from governments and international donors. Even Hollywood stars joined in at a U.S. benefit show over the weekend.

Madonna sang John Lennon's "Imagine," and Elton John chimed in with "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me." Among those answering phones and taking pledges in Los Angeles were Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicolas Cage.