Posted on 12/28/2004 4:29:14 PM PST by neverdem
MEDICAL RESPONSE
WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 - The World Health Organization, Doctors Without Borders and other international agencies have begun rushing medical teams, generators and other equipment to provide safe drinking water and sanitation and reduce threats of infectious-disease outbreaks in the Asian countries hit by the earthquake and tsunamis on Sunday.
Immediate health threats include wounds from stepping on nails and broken glass; dehydration and heat stroke from exposure in hot muggy weather; the possibility of electrocution from downed wires; and diarrheal and respiratory diseases caused by various bacteria and viruses that can spread rapidly because of poor sanitation and a lack of clean water.
As health workers carry out assessments to determine the immediate needs in each affected area, they also want to take steps to avoid outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and dengue fever that could surge in the next few weeks as the insects breed in pools of stagnant water.
W.H.O., a United Nations agency based in Geneva, recently built a new command center there that has only been mobilized a few times in response to outbreaks of infectious diseases. On Sunday, a team of 13 health experts began using the command center for the first time to deal with a natural disaster. To improve communications between field workers and the agency as they request aid, the command center has one set of telephone numbers for officials of governments and private health organizations to call.
The aim is to avoid much of the competition and lack of coordination that have hampered the response of governments and private organizations to earlier catastrophes, Robert Holden, a member of the command center team, said in a telephone interview.
In responding to the tsunami in South and Southeast Asia, he said: "The biggest problem is ensuring that those who survived continue to survive and provide the materials they need. We must avoid creating a secondary disaster because we can't get the necessary materials through."
As international organizations fly in materials to set up temporary health centers to supplement the hospitals that are likely to be inundated with people seeking treatment, logistical problems abound.
Doctors Without Borders said it had to delay until Wednesday a shipment of 32 tons of relief materials to Sumatra from Ostende, Belgium, because of the lack of an available airplane. The cargo includes generators, water bladders and tanks, plastic sheeting, mosquito nets, chlorination kits, a hospital tent and various medical supplies.
"We are not thinking about food right now," said Jan Weuts, the group's emergency coordinator in Belgium. "The priority is clean water."
Desalination is considered a priority because salt water from the tsunami has contaminated supplies of fresh water.
Dangers also loom from eating spoiled food. Infectious diseases like dysentery, cholera, hepatitis A and leptospirosis that are present in an area can spread through sewage, said Dr. Maria Connelly, a W.H.O. expert on emergencies. The threat depends in part on which diseases are prevalent in an area, and it can increase when sewage spills into streets.
Toddlers and young children are often victims in earthquakes and tsunamis because they cannot swim and are not strong enough to crawl through the rubbish. Among surviving children, it can be a problem to enforce basic hygiene to keep them from acquiring and spreading diseases.
Officials of the international groups are awaiting assessments from the first wave of health workers to reach the affected areas. "The needs are often quite specific and have to be timely based on assessments in each area," said Catrin Schulte-Hillen, the program director for Doctors Without Borders in the United States.
The response has to be measured to avoid sending too many teams to one country and too few to another.
Immunizations are a lower priority in disasters because it takes time to organize such programs and for the body to build up immunity, said Dr. Brad Woodruff, a medical epidemiologist at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
The centers have not been asked to participate in the relief efforts, a spokesman said.
I just got off the phone with people looking to buy out my entire stock of water purification equipment (ozone generators) and ship it over there as foreign aid. Anyone here have experience with dealing with Int'l Agencies in a situation like this? Advice would be appreciated (I'll likely be going with them to make sure they are used correctly)
And I heard on the car radio this afternoon (ABC radio, I think,, it was a news break at the half hour) that there are thugs blocking the roads being used to transport emergency supplies.
Apparently they have said they will take the supplies forward to those in need.
If anyone else has additional information on this, I'd appreciate a ping.
Well, that doesn't sound promising...
that is exactly why people all over the third world are starving to death....we give and the thugs take. the food comes off the boats right into the dictators machete, machine gun laden hands.
Good luck to you and your mission.
Actually the civil war in Sri Lanka was settled about three years ago, which is one of the reasons why it is now a popular tourist destination. You might be thinking instead of Indonesia, several of the hardest hit regions are in the center of an uprising against the government.
Tsunamis death toll soars to 52,000-plus
The floods uprooted land mines in Sri Lanka - a nation torn by a decades-old war with Tamil separatists in the north. The mines now threatened aid workers and survivors, UNICEF said.
That's the 5th paragraph from the end of the second link.
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