U.S. Water News Online
JAKARTA -- Rushing water purification tablets to survivors and building rudimentary toilets remain the focus of efforts to fend off deadly disease outbreaks in communities devastated by the Asian earthquake and tsunami, health officials said.
Sporadic cases of diarrhea have been reported in tsunami zones in India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, but in most cases the cause is not cholera or other bugs that could spark an epidemic. Although there are gaps in surveillance, health officials say they are confident they have an accurate picture and that deadly outbreaks have not yet occurred.
The World Health Organization warns that hygiene in many of the hundreds of refugee camps that have sprung up around the region is the biggest disease concern. The U.N. health agency has predicted that the 150,000 death toll from the disaster could double if urgent measures aren't taken to prevent outbreaks.
"It's critical over the next few weeks, when we've got to be extra vigilant and extra cautious," said Roy Wadia, WHO spokesman in Sri Lanka.
Tightening up disease detection and bolstering the health care structure are also major priorities so that illnesses can be caught and treated early to minimize the risk of outbreaks.
An estimated 3 million to 5 million people are living in refugee camps across the tsunami-stricken area.
In Sri Lanka, aid workers are digging ditches at camps to create latrines, but because the groundwater is high, that is proving quite challenging in some areas, Wadia said.
Measles vaccination campaigns are under way across the region and mosquito nets are being distributed to minimize the risk of malaria and dengue fever that could break out from mosquitoes breeding in pools of stagnant flood waters that have formed amid the rubble.
Laboratory equipment is being shipped to the hardest hit areas to analyze samples so that disease outbreaks can be confirmed or discounted rapidly.
In most places, hospitals are coping well with the patient load, World Health Organization officials across the affected area said. In nearly all the communities hit by the disaster, the acute injuries have been dealt with and people have either died or are on the mend.
Experts say they don't believe there are large numbers of people with festering wounds in need of urgent medical care.
"In the hospitals (in India), the reports we are getting are that there is nothing very serious there," said Dr. Poonam Singh, deputy regional director for Southeast Asia at the World Health Organization.
However, in Banda Aceh, at the northwest tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra -- the area hardest hit by the disaster -- hospitals are now admitting injured survivors whose wounds have become dangerously infected.
Earlier in the disaster, patients were turning up at hospitals in the town with minor cuts and bruises. But rescue workers continue to find injured survivors in remote areas and in the 10 days since they got their cuts, their conditions have worsened. The complications have led in some cases to septicemia, or life-threatening blood poisoning, and to gangrene, forcing doctors to amputate limbs.
A few cases of tetanus have surfaced in Banda Aceh, but those patients can be promptly cared for, said Dr. Ron Waldman, a prominent emergency response and infectious disease expert coordinating the WHO's efforts in the regional capital.
The World Health Organization says $66 million is urgently needed to finance the health efforts.
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