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The prevention of communicable disease outbreaks has become a key public health issue after a major earthquake stroke southeast China on May 12. While rescuers are still trying their best to find life beneath debris, experts suggest effective ways to fight against possible illnesses such as diarrhea and gas gangrene among the survivors.
Except for water-related epidemics which are now on top of the list due to the likely contamination of drinking water, arboviral and zoonosis-borne illnesses should also be avoided, said Dr. YANG Rongge, senior researcher on molecular epidemiology with the Wuhan-based CAS Institute of Virology (WHIOV), during a Xinhua online interview on May 19.
Safe drinking water and good sanitation are most urgent needs since they imply basic transmission routes of communicable diseases. To eliminate diarrhea, one of the most common water-related diseases usually observed in disaster-hit areas, people should drink clean water, keep bottles capped and remember to wash hands before they drink or eat.
As to the widely reported 58 cases of gas gangrene across Sichuan, Dr. Yang said that gas gangrene is a bacterial infection which produces gas within gangrenous tissues. Isolation of patients, their clothes and other infected items can prevent cross-infection.
However, according to him, the disease is not that terrible in nature, and can be controlled with appropriate treatment within six hours.
The expert also urged to prevent arboviral and zoonosis-borne diseases, suggesting that rats, mosquitoes and flies should be kept away, and that dead bodies of animals or livestock get immediate deep-burial or cremation.
Meanwhile, Dr. Yang warned of diseases associated with crowding. With displacement of population in quake aftermath, masses of injured people should be scattered to prevent cross-infection.
He is confident that the possibility of major epidemic outbreaks in Sichuan is going to be rather slim.
Dr. Yang has been a researcher on molecular epidemiology and molecular biology of HIV/ AIDS studies for over two decades. Before being recruited to WHIOV through the CAS-piloted
Beiren Program in 2005, he had been working at Yamanashi Medical University and the National Institute of Infectious Diseases of Japan.