Plastic bottles could provide the cheapest and most practical way of preventing water-borne diseases in regions affected by the recent tsunami, say Swiss scientists quoted on the Science and Development Network website.
Solar water disinfection — or Sodis — relies on radiation and heat from the sun to kill most bacteria and viruses in the water. All people need to do, researchers told SwissInfo, is fill a clear plastic bottle with water, shake it, and leave it in the sun for at least six hours.
The main problem, they say, is convincing individuals and organisations that such a simple method could be effective. They would need to recruit the help of local partners to help promote the method to those living in affected areas.
Meanwhile, public health officials in countries hit by last month’s tsunami are rapidly burying victims in mass graves to prevent disease outbreaks. But this is an unnecessary practice according to a report released last year.
The report, produced by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in September 2004, says mass burial following natural disasters should be avoided.
It says it is a myth that human corpses pose a higher risk of diseases such as cholera, because most harmful bacteria and viruses die soon after human death as the body temperature falls.
According to [email protected], mass burials also reduce the likelihood of identifying victims — who should be buried instead in a way that allows later exhumation and a dignified funeral. It recommends that each body is carefully recorded, tagged and put into an individual body bag.
In addition, an editorial in the influential journal Nature argues that the tsunami teaches the world that science should be shared.
This editorial argues that the way events unfolded, and their tragic consequences, show the disparity in how science is applied in different parts of the world. It points out the irony that the very same tools of communication that could have saved lives instead brought news of widespread death.
There are two lessons to be learnt.
International bodies set up to provide early warnings of natural disasters must no longer be neglected and underfunded. Also, people in rich countries need to ask their governments to “pay modest respect to the value of human life” — particularly when deciding research priorities. Scientists have a role to play in this, says the article.
Earth scientists should follow the example of biomedical researchers in developed nations who have put time, effort and funding into studying diseases that affect mostly poorer nations.
“It is clear, with the benefit of hindsight, that the arcane international bodies that manage tsunami protection have been neglected and underfunded for many years,” says the editorial. “Most of them have focused on the Pacific Ocean, and occasional attempts to widen their brief to the Indian Ocean have been rebuffed.”
A master plan prepared in 1999 by ITSU, one of the international organizations that plans for the monitoring of tsunamis, stated: “Tsunami hazards exist on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, in the eastern Indian Ocean, and in the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and Black Seas. Efforts to establish warning centers in those areas should be encouraged.”
“An important reason for the previous confinement of monitoring systems to the Pacific has been the occurrence of two tsunamis in the Pacific quite recently, in 1960 and 1964. The last tsunami produced by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean is thought to have occurred back in 1833.”
“However, the most important differentiating factor has been the readiness of ‘Pacific rim’ nations such as Japan, Australia and the United States to support a cheap but potentially effective system for monitoring and for educating the public about an infrequent risk. India, Indonesia and the other nations on the Indian Ocean’s rim are relatively poor countries with needs that seemed more pressing than that of planning against the remote — but nonetheless inevitable — prospect of a tsunami.” —(www.scidev.net)