Philippine disaster wave after Supertyphoon

A father cuddles his son aboard a US Air Force C-130 plane on a mercy flight from typhoon-ravaged Tacloban City to Manila last Sunday.

Kari Stoever

Global Health and Development Expert

Philippines Second Wave: Typhoon TB

Posted: 11/25/2013 5:29 pm

Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful storms to ever make landfall, devastated the Philippines, killing more than 5,000 and displacing four million people. As emergency food, water and medical supplies are finally beginning to make their way to the typhoon's victims, the country is facing deadly infectious disease outbreaks that would be challenging for any country to control in lei of these circumstances.

Infectious diseases often create a second wave of disaster. Lack of shelter and continued bad weather are leading to widespread acute respiratory infections, which the Philippines Department of Health officials say are becoming the biggest public health threat since the typhoon. Medical authorities also worry about leptospirosis, a water-borne parasitic disease endemic to the Philippines, diseases that thrive in tropical, unsanitary environments like cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery, other infections spread through crowded evacuation centers and shelters.

While the Philippines work to save lives and rebuild communities, diseases like tuberculosis (TB) often become "opportunistic" in these situations -- taking advantage of interruptions in treatment, malnutrition, stress and weakened immune systems. According to the World Health Organization, there are more than 260,000 new cases of TB in the Philippines each year, causing more than 28,000 deaths -- averaging 75 Filipinos each day. That is more than five times as many people that have died so far in Typhoon Haiyan.

Ensuring continuity of TB treatment after natural disasters has proven difficult even in more developed countries. Interruptions in treatment for just one patient spread TB throughout a shelter in Japan after the earthquake in 2011. And, in countries with high existing TB burdens where disasters have displaced large numbers of people, TB outcomes have been much more severe. The 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the country with the highest TB burden in the western hemisphere, destroyed existing TB health infrastructure and left more than a million people living in tents, providing the perfect environment for the disease to spread. By 2012, public health experts were calling TB the biggest residual health problem in post-earthquake Haiti, predicting spikes in incidence for years to come.

In the Philippines, several TB control projects and treatment centers were located in Tacloban, the hardest-hit city in the Philippines, and while it's too soon for reports on the full extent of any damages, the destruction was so vast that the treatment regimens of most TB patients in the area were surely interrupted. The Philippines are in danger of following Haiti down the path of increased TB incidence post-disaster. HUFFINGTON POST