http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/01/13/haiti.earthquake.medical.risks/index.html
On Tuesday, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake ripped apart buildings, shearing huge slabs of concrete off structures in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. About 3 million people -- one-third of Haiti's population -- were affected by the quake, the Red Cross estimated.
The disaster cut power, electricity and other utilities. This could leave people without clean drinking water and at greater risk of malnutrition and disease. The potential new mass of displaced persons could create crowded, unsanitary conditions that facilitate the spread of contagious respiratory infections, said Dr. Peter Hotez, head of the department of microbiology at George Washington University.
Usually in natural disasters people suffer extreme physical and mental shock along with the initial injuries caused by the disaster, such as amputations and fractures, said Dr. Tamman Aloudat, senior health officer with the International Red Cross in Geneva, Switzerland.
"This is going to a big setback for public health control measures, and you will see the impact of this earthquake at least for months and possibly for years," Hotez said. "What you're going to need is something equivalent to a Marshall plan for Haiti. These are our neighbors. You go to Haiti, it's like you go back in time 500 years and see incredible neglected tropical diseases that don't need to be there."
"I have the hope this situation may lead to improvements, because it's bringing lots of attention and help to the area," Kaplan said. "There's that silver lining."
reader's comment.
Whoever is moderating this, PLEASE, have these idiots remove the term "perfect storm" off their title. In trying to be eloquent, the article writer is sounding dumber than a third grader. This is not eloquent journalism. NOTHING is "perfect" in this tragedy. We all get that you are meaning '...the situation could cause the worst medical problems'; but implying that something negative (medical issues) is at "perfect proportions" for those poor folks at this moment, is just flat-out idiotic. Any rookie journalist would no not to use these terms. Sometimes, we viewers wonder if you folks are just in it to make noise and get ratings or are truly concerned about realities of people's struggles -- which you
parade as your news.
There are cheap supplements out there (like MMS, for example) that can treat water and make it potable (drinkable). I have some at my home and in my emergency kit in case of a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina... why don't people use these sources? 1 bottle (that can purify more than 1,000 gallons of water) costs less than $20 retail... or use NutraSilver, it is a bit more expensive, but studies have shown it works, too! Always good to have those on hand. how about you start a charity idea for people to send that stuff there. sounds like a good
idea.
MENTAL AFTERSHOCKS: HAITI
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/01/15/haiti.mental.psychological.effects/index.html
As Haitians struggle to recover from the devastation of Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude earthquake, mental health experts caution that the most severe psychological effects won't take form until individuals' situations stabilize.
In the immediate short-term period after a large-scale traumatic event, people are concerned primarily with self-preservation and taking care of family and friends, said Dr. Sandro Galea, chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. These people experience acute stress and anxiety, which is taken up by trying to fulfill the immediate physical needs.
"People can accept uncertainty, as long as they are brought into the uncertainty and told what central authorities do know, and also what central authorities don't know," he said. "It's critically important that there is information that comes out centrally from a single source."
About a month after a disaster occurs, once the immediate physical needs are addressed, symptoms of mental illness begin to coalesce into specific conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, Galea said. PTSD in particular can last years after the event in a substantial portion of people, he said.
The life expectancy in Haiti is just 61 years, according to the World Bank, well under the average life span of 78 years for an individual in the United States. About 56 percent of Haitians live on less than $1 per day, according to the World Bank.
There is some research to suggest that fatalism -- feeling that you are powerless against life's external control -- is also related to long-term emotional consequences of disaster, Cook said.
I hope all those media reporters with cameras are taking closeup full face, profile and full body photos of EVERY body they pass, so that families will know where their loved one was when he or she died. CNN, PLEASE help with this task, grim as it is. Not knowing will cause lasting pain to so many.
- Perhaps there could be a possibility of setting up a specific sectoral management to deal with the immediate anxiety of families having loved ones trapped with such Haiti earthquake disaster. (Possible).
WHERE BODIES GO AFTER NATURAL DISASTER
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/01/14/haiti.mass.fatalities.bodies/index.html
Throughout the city, people covered their noses from the stench and some resorted to face masks. CNN correspondents in Haiti reported efforts to remove the bodies, including the creation of a mass grave. It's still unclear how many people have been killed in Tuesday's earthquake; the prime minister suggested there could be several hundreds of thousands.
CNN's Anderson Cooper, reporting Friday from a mass grave on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, described seeing hundreds of bodies mixed with garbage in open pits. Some bodies were bulldozed into the half-filled pits.
"These people will vanish," Cooper said in a phone report. "No one will know what happened to them. That's one of the many horrors.
"There's no system in place here. Literally these people here are being collected off the streets, dumped into a dump truck, then brought out here and dumped in the pits," he said.
The fear of disease is frequently the reason for rapidly burying bodies in mass graves. But contrary to popular belief, bodies do not cause epidemics after natural disasters, experts said.
"The reality is that most of the disease that live in us -- once our body is dead they can't survive very long," said Oliver Morgan, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fecal matter from the deceased could contaminate the water supply, posing a risk, but "it's nowhere near the risk of all the survivors living in the streets with no sanitation," said Morgan, who contributed to the World Health Organization's guidelines on managing bodies after a natural disaster.
Mass graves, it warned, are "not justified on public health grounds. Rushing to dispose of bodies without proper identification traumatizes families and communities and may have serious legal consequences."
Are there any scientific ingenuity to expedite and prolonge the body preservation of deceased victims from major disaster for possible extensive identification by families? Otherwise, a process of documentation and rapid publication of deceased identities? A system, be it through the Web, or through a central information disseminator, could be invented.
I think its mainly about closure.
People have only as much compassion as they can afford (resource wise, not just dollar wise). Hundreds of thousands of bodies rotting have to be disposed of as efficiently as possible. Remember the roads are shot, and there is no heavy equipment. That can't be digging individual graves. Try to picture yourself in that situation -- just you. Your house has collapsed, your family is dead, you have no food, water, shelter. No phone that works to call for help. Oh, and you have a broken arm and leg yourself. What would you do? I doubt you would be digging graves. Don't judge anyone for this. This is beyond comprehension. Normal rules don't apply
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