Japanese doctors fear flu wave in quake areas

Japanese doctors fear flu wave in quake areas

KOBE, Japan (Reuter): Doctors warned of a looming flu epidemic among refugees shivering in freezing temperatures and tempers flared yesterday over relief efforts following Japan's worst earthquake in more than 70 years.

With the dead and missing now numbering more than 5,000, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama came under fire on 1995's opening day of parliament for what the opposition said was a slow response to the tragedy

Not even an unprecedented parliamentary prayer for the victims deflected opposition demands for an explanation of why one of the world's most technologically advanced nation could not cope better with a natural disaster.

But mixed with the anger and fears of what lay ahead were stories of hope. Rescuers pulled out seven elderly women who survived three days entombed in the debris of their homes. An anonymous man gave US$200,000 for relief work.

Such victories kept rescue workers going in the grim search for survivors and stopped authorities from declaring an end to the hunt.

Temperatures remained at freezing point, setting off warnings by Kobe doctors that a flu epidemic, or worse, was hovering over nearly 300,000 people made refugees by Tuesday's earthquake, which registered a huge 7.2 on the open-ended Richter scale.

"We are very worried about a flu epidemic, especially among children," said Shunichi Fukuda, spokesman for the Kobe City Central Citizen's Hospital.

"There are already a lot of children with fevers," he said. Shigeo Kaneko, spokesman for the Kobe Steel Hospital, the medical establishment for one of Kobe's biggest employers, said because of a bitter winter many residents already were vulnerable before the quake struck.

"It is incredibly cold this winter and what with the quake its almost inevitable there's going to be some sort of flu epidemic," he told Reuters.

Delays in getting medicines and other supplies, including blankets, to refugees were among criticism thrown at the prime minister at the start of a 150-day session of parliament.

The session started with a prayer for the victims, the first time the key lower house had offered such a prayer since the end of World War II.

Aware that the opposition was poised to attack, Murayama admitted there was initial confusion in his government's slow response to the disaster and pledged a wholescale revision of the nation's disaster policies.

"It was my first experience and it took place early in the morning, so there was some confusion," Murayama told parliament.

"We'll revise things that need revising," he said. "It is imperative that we rethink and restructure our disaster relief policies for the whole of Japan."

The opposition suggested more lives could have been saved if the prime minister had been more decisive.

"It is a shame that as the ultimate commander of the Self Defense Forces (Japan's military), the prime minister couldn't take faster and more positive leadership to save lives," said Toshihiro Nikai of the main opposition New Frontier Party.

"He should feel great remorse at the absence of people taking responsibility and the almost complete lack of preparedness," he said.

By nightfall yesterday there were 4,393 dead, 656 missing and 22,590 injured in Japan's worst natural disaster since the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, which killed 140,000 people in Tokyo and Yokohama.

Cold, hungry and homeless, the number of people in refugee camps set up in gymnasiums and schools rose to 290,000, many of them fearful a possible big aftershock might make their damaged homes collapse.

Others, unable to get into the crowded and undersupplied centers, slept in cars or out in the open.

There appeared to be growing concern among embassies in Japan about how many foreigners might be in the refugee camps.

Radio stations broadcast appeals by the French Embassy for its nationals to get in touch.

Police set up telephone hotlines for foreigners and the United States Embassy, which has confirmed the death of two Americans, sent a team to the area.

A spokesman for the Chinese Consulate General in nearby Osaka said the death toll among the roughly 10,000 or so Chinese living in the area was at least 10.