Disease starts to set in after Myanmar Cyclone
Pastor Dale Morgan
Disease starts to set in after Myanmar Cyclone*
* Story Highlights
* Foreign aid agencies say conditions in nation are ripe for disease
outbreaks
* Myanmar's government insists health conditions in nation are normal
* Ruling junta has allowed some U.N. aid workers into region
DEDAYE, Myanmar (AP) -- Myint Hlaing's family bathes and cooks with
water from an irrigation ditch fouled by human waste and a rotting cow
carcass.
Cyclone survivors receive packets of chicken curry and rice donated by a
monastery in Yangon on Sunday.
His 10-year-old daughter drinks bottled water donated by aid groups, but
she still suffers from diarrhea. Meanwhile, his family and other cyclone
survivors endure daily rains in tattered thatch huts as the monsoon
season nears.
Myanmar's junta insists health conditions are normal in Myanmar's
devastated Irawaddy delta. But in many areas of the delta, they are a
recipe for disease.
"Shelter is the most important thing we need," Myint Hlaing said Monday.
"There are more and more mosquitoes here. We are afraid of getting
dengue fever."
Relief group Church World Service has reported finding elderly and child
survivors of the cyclone dying from dysentery in some areas because many
have no choice but to drink dirty water. Other groups have detected a
number of ailments including pneumonia, malaria, cholera and diarrhea.
Save the Children UK has warned that some 30,000 children in the delta
were severely malnourished before Cyclone Nargis struck, with thousands
facing starvation in the next two or three weeks. The monsoon season,
which begins next month, adds yet another challenge.
"The rain is a real problem," Eric Stover, lead author of a critical
report published last year about Myanmar's broken health system, told
The Associated Press after visiting the delta. "The water is rising up,
and the latrines are just outside (flowing) into the water, and there's
livestock around. That's the perfect breeding ground for diarrhea and
cholera."
Stover, a professor of law and public health at the School of Public
Health at the University of California, Berkeley, managed to slip past
military checkpoints twice to get a glimpse of the devastation. He was
unable to assess the health situation in villages, but said conditions
are ripe for outbreaks.
"It's as bad as we all think it is, there's no question about that," he
said. "I think for public health people and for U.N. personnel the
frustrating thing is that they can't see it."
UNICEF has been canvassing the area and has reported a growing number of
diarrhea cases -- up to 30 percent of young children in one township.
Myanmar's Ministry of Health has started vaccinating some children in
camps against measles, another big threat.
The World Health Organization says it still doesn't have a clear medical
picture because tight government restrictions have kept the delta
off-limits to its foreign experts. Remote villages accessed only by boat
remain the biggest question mark because many still have not been
reached more than three weeks after the storm.
"We have no hard numbers," said Maureen Birmingham, a WHO epidemiologist
in Thailand. "We continue to remain concerned because it's a high-risk
situation for diarrheal disease, malaria and dengue."
Myanmar's government has worked hard to keep international aid agencies
from visiting the delta since the May 2-3 storm belted the region,
killing some 78,000 people and leaving 56,000 others missing. It has not
reported any disease outbreaks.
The regime has said it is able to handle relief efforts on its own, but
its ruling general assured visiting U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
last week that all international aid agencies would be allowed in to
help. It remained unclear Monday how many foreigners would be permitted
to travel beyond Yangon, the country's largest city.
Access to regular supplies of safe drinking water and proper sanitation
is essential for preventing waterborne diseases like cholera, which
spreads rapidly through water contaminated with feces. Malaria and
dengue fever outbreaks also will be a major concern in the coming weeks
after mosquitoes have time to breed in the stagnant water that flooded
the delta.
Myanmar was plagued by malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS and other big killers
before the disaster, in a country where one in three children is
estimated to be malnourished. About 3 percent of the annual budget is
spent on health, compared to 40 percent on the military, according to
Stover's report.
In 2000, the WHO ranked Myanmar's health system as the world's
second-worst, ahead only of war-ravaged Sierra Leone.