Disease the biggest challenge

2004-12-27 22:28

Brigitte Castelnau

Paris - The risk of epidemics spreading from the devastation and thousands of rotting corpses is the main challenge facing aid workers rushing to help the Asian regions smashed by killer tsunamis, experts said on Monday.

The danger of disease was all the more pronounced because of level of sanitation in the countries hit was relatively low, the death and destruction was widespread and infrastructure such as roads and communication was broken, they said.

"The principal danger is that of diseases transmitted through water, especially malaria and diarrhoea, and infections caught through respiration," a Red Cross official in Geneva, Hakan Sandbladh, said.

Almost 24 000 people died in coastal areas of Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Maldives when waves as big as buildings crashed down on packed resorts and villages following an undersea earthquake off the Indonesian coast early Sunday.

"Shelters, tents, blankets, drinking water, food, domestic utensils and mosquito nets all make up the priority needs of the disaster victims," the head of Asia and Pacific department of the Red Cross, Simon Missiri, said.

Experts pointed out that, though the risk of epidemics varied from country to country according to their standards of hygiene, the summer temperatures, poor to inexistent sewerage and spoiled food all provided ideal breeding grounds for germs.

Typhoid was of particular concern.

Groups such as Doctors Without Borders warned that catastrophes tend to fuel small local illnesses into full-blown epidemics.

The destruction of water and sewage pipes, the disruption of vaccination programmes and the lack of attention to disease-carrying pests such as rats and mosquitoes exacerbated the risk, they said.

In this situation, the stagnant pools of water created by the tsunamis could boost the numbers of mosquitoes and other insects that transmit tropical maladies such as malaria and dengue fever.

"The risk of epidemics is also linked to concentrations of people whose houses have been destroyed," Pauline Horrill of Doctors Without Borders said.

Cramped living quarters in camps "favour the direct transmission of infections, especially respiratory ones, such as measles", she said.

Diarrhoea, which can often prove fatal to children, needs fluid replacement as treatment, along with the supply of liquid nourishment through tubes inserted down the nose.

Even though the teams of doctors sent to Asia from around the world will have to cope with all that as soon as they arrive, their immediate attention would be turned to looking after people suffering serious injury, including organ damage from being crushed under objects.

- AFP