[Coco] Lab South is Fine

[Tony Schountz]

On Aug 31, 2005, at 1:37 PM, Ward Griffiths wrote:

> On 08/31/2005 01:33 pm, jdaggett at gate.net wrote:
>
>> The real problem that New Orleans has over the  next week is
>> outbreaks of Cholora, Typhoid and other tropical diseases.
>>
>
> Neither of those are tropical diseases.  Both were major killers in  
> northern
> temperate climates until the invention of decent plumbing and sewage
> disposal.  You may have been thinking of malaria (which would be as  
> extinct
> as smallpox if the Greens hadn't gotten DDT banned) or Yellow  
> Fever, which
> used to be endemic in the District of Columbia.

Anytime you have a natural disaster with the volume of water seen  
with Katrina you're at risk of cholera and typhoid fever outbreaks.  
Most sewage treatment facilities are exposed to such flooding, and  
since cholera is endemic in just about every ecosystem with aquatic  
organisms you're going to get some contamination of water. The best  
solution is to boil water before drinking it. However, at onset it's  
imperative to get patients hydrated quickly; cholera kills in hours.  
If you get patients IV fluids and electrolytes within a couple of  
hours mortality rates will be low  (such as hurricane Mitch in  
Central America in 1998). Typhoid fever has to be treated with  
antibiotics, but at least you have a few weeks them to get the patients.

--
Tony Schountz, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Microbiology
University of Northern Colorado
1556 Ross Hall
501 20th Street
Greeley, CO 80639
http://www.unco.edu/schountz/
Voice/FAX: (970) 351-2923