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Hanoi: Reports of malaria outbreaks and diarrhoea in Myanmar's low-lying areas hardest hit by Cyclone Nargis have sent health experts scrambling to prevent widespread illness, UN health officials said yesterday.
An early estimate had 20 per cent of children suffering from diarrhoea in the worst-affected areas, and there are concerns that the situation could worsen, said Osamu Kunii, the Unicef's chief of health and nutrition in Yangon.
Drinking water scarce
"Most of the area is covered by dirty water," he said. "There's a lot of dead bodies, and (survivors) have very poor access - sometimes no access - to clean drinking water or food."
Water purification tablets were not helping because much of the water supply had been contaminated by saltwater that flooded the area, he said.
It was unclear how many people could be suffering from malaria, but the mosquito-borne disease is endemic to the Irrawaddy delta, the area hardest hit by the storm, said Poonam Khetrapal Singh, deputy director of the World Health Organisation's Southeast Asia office in New Delhi. She said 10,000 mosquito nets were being rushed in.
There also have been reports of respiratory infections among children.
"Safe water, sanitation, safe food: these are things that we feel are priorities at the moment," Singh said.
A WHO team from the Myanmar office is working to assess the situation, and a few international technical experts are making their way into the country, she said.
Myanmar's state-run media has reported nearly 23,000 deaths and more than 42,000 missing in the wake of the storm. But a top US diplomat has said the death toll could surpass 100,000.
"It reminds me of the tsunami, when every day the figures kept rising, and that's really the pattern here," Singh said, referring to the 2004 Asian tsunami, which killed nearly 230,000 people.
Unicef's Kunii also responded to some of the worst tsunami-hit areas, and he said the situation in Myanmar was even worse in some ways because "this time, it is quite difficult because most of the areas are quite remote and difficult to access".
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