Post-tsunami health care in dire condition: WHO
Post-tsunami health care in dire condition: WHO
Agence France-Presse, Bangkok
Health experts warned on Friday it could take years to rebuild health infrastructure in tsunami-devastated parts of Asia where millions of people face potential widespread outbreaks of disease.
In some places 60 percent of clinics and hospitals have been destroyed by the waves, resulting in massive deaths among medical workers, said the World Health Organization's (WHO) Southeast Asia director Samlee Plianbangchang.
"One military hospital (in Aceh) had about 100 medical personnel including doctors, but after the tsunami only 10 of them survived," Samlee told reporters.
"Basic health services should be rehabilitated by the end of 2006."
He said the lack of basic health facilities was greatly amplifying the risk of large scale disease outbreaks in the wake of the tsunamis.
"We are far from ensuring no more life will be lost. We are on high alert for possible disease outbreaks," he said, adding up to five million people had been displaced by the disaster.
Samlee said the greatest immediate challenge was providing clean drinking water in countries such as Indonesia and Sri Lanka, which along with other hard-hit areas faced outbreaks of dysentery and malaria, among other diseases.
"The situation across the region is ripe for cholera," said Samlee.
The WHO's Thailand director William Aldis said the kingdom had been one of the only countries capable of staging a rapid health response as its medical infrastructure had survived largely intact.
"Thai health workers processed over 8,000 injured people. Only three people out of every 1,000 died from their injuries," he said. "This is amazing mass casualty management."
But he said psychological trauma was proving to be just as pressing an issue in Thailand and throughout the region, where the WHO was working with governments to ensure long-term counseling for survivors.
"Of 400 students (at one Thai school) 300 are either dead or missing. So when we try to imagine the psychological state of the children who survived it's unimaginable," he said.
The number of people killed when an earthquake and tsunamis devastated Indian Ocean coastlines on December 26 shot up past 165,000 Friday as Indonesia confirmed nearly 20,000 more deaths. The death toll in Indonesia, which bore the brunt of the disaster, climbed to 113,306, the social affairs ministry's relief coordination center told AFP. This was up from the previous day's tally of 94,200.
The United Nations has warned that tens of thousands more dead may be as yet unaccounted for in Indonesia.