Disease detectives find routine -- not exotic -- health problems

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Posted on Fri, Sep. 09, 2005

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/nation/12605481

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Disease detectives find routine -- not exotic -- health problems

By M. Krieger, The Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss. Knight

Ridder/Tribune Business News

Sep. 9 - No one's been bitten by a poisonous snake. Alligators

aren't attacking. Coastal mosquitoes have not spread West Nile virus.

That is the reassuring news from the first analysis of data by teams

of disease detectives with the state and federal government, who

have begun to compile statistics of injuries and illnesses in the

six-county Gulf Coast region in an effort to spot problems quickly.

While the most frightening scenarios have not been seen, there has

been a big jump in the number of routine health problems reported to

the medical teams with the state Department of Health and federal

Centers for Disease Control. They fall into three major categories:

-- lacerations, sprains and other injuries, suffered during the

storm or while cleaning up debris.

-- skin infections, caused when small wounds are contaminated by

water-borne bacteria such as Staphylococcus.

Fungal infections can be caused by prolonged dampness.

-- gastrointestinal illnesses, such as the vomiting and diarrhea

associated with Norwalk virus, caused by ingesting dirty water. Two

shelters reported small clusters of cases of this illness, which is

brief and not life-threatening.

" Everyday stuff has picked up as a result of the hurricane, " said

Dr. Byers, epidemiologist with the Mississippi Department of

Health. " The numbers are going up for all sorts of reasons. "

There are about 1,000 reports a day of medical problems, evenly

split between illnesses and injuries, according to the medical

teams. To collect data, the epidemiologists visit doctors, clinics,

hospitals and shelters every day, then ship their reports to

for computer analysis.

" We're looking for trends, so if we see evidence of an outbreak, we

can respond aggressively and appropriately to control it, " said

Montgomery of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in

Atlanta.

Dehydration is common, due to the heat and shortage of clean

drinking water.

But there have been no asphyxiation deaths from gas-powered

generators, as feared. Surprisingly, there has been only one illness

attributable to the Salmonella bacteria, which thrives in

undercooked meat -- and this case is not blamed on the hurricane.

The initial worry about epidemics of cholera and typhoid seems

largely unfounded, because those microbes do not live in this region.

West Nile encephalitis was not an issue before the hurricane and

should not be an issue now if mosquito populations are controlled.

Although reports of corpses often spark public fear of disease,

experts say that decaying bodies pose little risk. Few infectious

organisms survive after the host dies.

It will be weeks before the full health consequences of Hurricane

Katrina are known. But so far the data shows that large-scale

outbreaks of disease have been prevented -- and if found by the

disease detective teams, can be quickly controlled.

" We've been pretty lucky, " said Byers.

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