Earthquake in Turkey and Syria: hygiene conditions raise fears of an epidemic, according to WHO


Rémi Trieau (in Antioch) with AFP
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09:57, February 12, 2023

While the death toll is now approaching 30,000 dead, a week after the disaster, humanitarian organizations are particularly concerned about the spread of cholera, which has reappeared in Syria. In Turkey too, the lack of access to functional toilets and the corpses waiting to be buried are worsening hygiene conditions.

A week after the powerful earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria and killed more than 28,000 people, several concerns are hovering over humanitarian organizations. According to the UN, given the scale of the disaster, the death toll could “double” in the coming days. In Syria, they are monitoring the risk of a cholera epidemic while in Turkey, rescuers are still saving people from the debris. On the spot, the survivors are still afraid of aftershocks, but another threat floats above their heads, that of several epidemics.

A smell of death

Indeed in Antioch, a city particularly hit by the tremors, the smell in the streets, of death under the rubble, is stronger day by day. Everywhere, bodies are rotting. There are so many of those rescuers pull out of the rubble that the morgues are no longer enough. To the north, a new cemetery looking like a mass grave was opened on Friday. Dozens of corpses packed in body bags are waiting to be buried there. A simple wooden plank planted in the ground indicates a number for each deceased.

In town, garbage cans pile up on the sidewalks. The survivors live on the street, without water. They do not have access to functional toilets. Without electricity, they are exposed to the cold and risk falling ill while the medicine is lacking. Deplorable hygienic conditions conducive to the spread of disease, according to the WHO, which fears a major health crisis, which would cause even more damage than the earthquakes themselves.

“We need to make sure people have the essentials to survive in the period ahead,” said Robert Holden, the WHO’s earthquake response officer. Otherwise, he warned, “we really risk seeing a secondary disaster which could cause more damage to people than the initial disaster if we do not act at the same pace and with the same intensity as for search and rescue operations”.



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