Disease warnings for flood returnees

Medical officials in Sri Lanka have expressed concern over possible health risks as most of the 13,000 displaced by flooding return home.

 

"A record number of health camps are being [set up] in affected districts to provide emergency healthcare to flood victims," Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena told IRIN on 2 June.

 

"The risk of epidemics is high but with the water subsiding, the situation has improved," he said. The ministry is running more than 100 health camps in the affected districts to attend to flood-affected persons, he said.  

 

Areas of concern include hepatitis A, diarrhoea, cholera, typhoid, viral flu, Leptospirosis, also known as rat fever, as well as snake bites, Paba Palihawadene, director of the ministry's epidemiology unit, said.

 

Emergency medical supplies had been rushed to the main hospitals in affected districts, Sirisena said, while over 100 doctors had been deployed.

 

"The authorities have managed to hospitalise over 180 persons suffering from high fever, dengue [fever] and diarrhoea, despite the flooding. We have cautioned people to refrain from drinking unsafe water as water-borne diseases could be our next problem," he said.

 

"The health risks have doubled in the western province since the torrential rains," Palihawadene noted. "During the floods, [rubbish] collection in the flood-affected districts was minimal. Mosquito breeding also increased," she said.

 

Flood-displaced return

 

More than 500,000 people were affected by heavy rains in southern and western Sri Lanka that began on 14 May.

 

Of the original 13,000 displaced by the flooding, just 131 are still in one of two government-run shelters in the badly affected Gampaha District, the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) reported on 2 June. They comprise 29 in Minuwandgoda and 102 in Wattala divisions.

 

Abdul Hameed Mohamed Fowzie, Minister of Disaster Management, told IRIN that all flood affected would be resettled this week but the government intended to continue supporting the families as floods had drastically affected their livelihoods.

 

Some 28 people were killed in the flooding, which damaged or destroyed more than 5,000 homes in the area, the DMC reported.

 

dk/ds/mw