Disease stalks cyclone survivors
Source: Al Jazeera.net
Almost a week after Cyclone Nargis hit
Relief agencies warn the official death toll of nearly 23,000 could rise much higher without urgent aid and medical supplies.
Already
one-in-five children in the worst-hit areas of the Irrawaddy Delta is
suffering from diarrhoea, according to estimates by Unicef, the United
Nations' children's fund. Large
areas of the delta region are also covered by dirty water, raising
fears of outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and
dengue fever. Meanwhile
dead bodies and animal carcasses rotting across the disaster zone are
further contaminating water supplies and raising the risk of typhoid. "We're worried there might also be cholera and we've heard of skin infections because there is very limited clean water," He
said problems transporting medical aid into the delta region were
adding to the growing health emergency, with flooded roads meaning many
areas were only accessible by boats which are in short supply. With
tonnes of international aid still held up by bureaucratic delays,
relief teams have managed to get only a trickle of aid into 'Huge needs' And it is proving difficult to get what little aid is available to the neediest areas Paul
Cawthorne, a nurse with global medical relief group Medecins Sans
Frontieres, said teams already in the region were reporting "massive
destruction [and] huge needs" across the Irrawaddy delta. "We're beginning to see more diarrhoeal diseases and this is of real concern to us," he told Al Jazeera. He said the flooding of large areas with sea water had created huge problems with salinated water supplies, as with the aftermath of the 2004 Asian tsunami. "This
is a major problem because if we can't get clean water in easily, it
means shipping in large amounts of clean water which is really a
nightmare scenario, especially with the destruction of bridges and
roads which were already in poor repair before the cyclone," he said. As
survivors become increasingly desperate reports say that many have
begun moving out of the worst-affected areas and congregating on higher
ground. But Cawthorne said such situations can prove a mixed-blessing in the aftermath of major disasters. "On the one hand having people congregated together will ease the distribution of aid," he told Al Jazeera. "But
we are concerned that when large numbers of people congregate, for
instance in a school or temple where there's no water supply or
sanitation, then again that can really fuel outbreaks of diseases like
diarrhoea."
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