MANILA - A month after parts of the Philippines were hit hard by successive typhoons, tens of thousands of people remain homeless and more than 150 have been killed by waterborne diseases, officials said.
Relief workers are particularly concerned about children in evacuation camps in towns and cities in the Manila metropolitan area that remain flooded.
Health officials said there was an outbreak of diseases in both evacuation centers and in flooded communities, particularly a bacterial infection called leptospirosis that had afflicted more than 2,000 residents and killed 157 as of Saturday.
Apart from leptospirosis - which is caused by urine from rats and other mammals - dengue fever, malaria, diarrhea, skin rashes, and other illnesses are common. Of the 35,000 people in evacuation centers, more than half suffer from some disease, most commonly acute respiratory illness, according to the Department of Health.
Efforts to relocate survivors have had limited impact because of the refusal of some affected residents, many of them slum dwellers whose shanties were destroyed, to be uprooted from their communities. According to the government, more than 1.2 million residents still live in damaged villages in greater Manila, some of them with waist-high floodwater.
Children are particularly vulnerable, according to Diwa Gacosta, a local representative of World Vision. She said that cramped and unsanitary conditions had caused an increase in these diseases. “The impact of the flood to children’s health is really a problem,’’ she said.
Last week, Save the Children, another nonprofit group, issued an alert about the situation. “Children in these storm-affected areas face a host of dangers that pose a threat to their very survival,’’ said Latha Caleb, head of the group’s branch in the Philippines.
