2023-09-18 06:29:34
Al Jazeera Net correspondents
tuber- Local and international warnings continue regarding the dangers of a possible environmental health crisis in the city of Derna and the rest of the areas in eastern Libya affected by the hurricane and floods, and the deaths and missing people they left behind among the rubble of destroyed buildings, and bodies spread near the beaches where the torrential rains poured.
The Minister of Health in the government appointed by the House of Representatives, Othman Abdel Jalil, announced that 3,166 deceased had been buried in the city of Derna as of yesterday, Friday, while some estimates indicate the death and loss of regarding 15,000 and the displacement of regarding 30,000 of the population, whose number was estimated at regarding 120,000 until the arrival of the government. The hurricane that struck the eastern region last Sunday.
Huge numbers of bodies were buried in mass graves, amid warnings of the resulting health effects (Anatolia)
International warnings
For its part, the World Health Organization and other relief organizations called on the authorities in Libya to stop burying flood victims in mass graves, and warned that burying them near water may create health risks. A United Nations report indicated that more than a thousand people have been buried in this way so far. In the city of Derna.
Efforts continued to recover bodies scattered in the streets and homes affected by the floods, but residents and relief teams face great difficulties in dealing with thousands of bodies that were returned to land by the waves or decomposed under the rubble, as eyewitnesses confirmed to Al Jazeera Net that the smells resulting from these bodies reached relatively distant areas, such as Bab Tobruk area at the top of the mountain.
The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Health in the Government of National Unity, Saad al-Din al-Wakil, told Al Jazeera Net, “The dangers lie in the mixing of drinking water with sewage water and all kinds of pollutants and groundwater,” noting that “all the affected areas are fed by groundwater wells.”
The agent stressed the need to limit consumption to bottled water until the safety of drinking water is confirmed. He added, “Fortunately, the area is agricultural and there are no factories containing highly dangerous chemicals.”
The health official said that environmental sanitation teams are working to drain the swamps and spray appropriate medical materials that reduce the percentage of pollution, explaining that they have assigned epidemiological monitoring teams to monitor all symptoms that indicate the presence of possible cases of poisoning, in cooperation between the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Local Government, and the Ministry of Health. The unity government, to carry out monitoring and investigation operations and provide guidelines for action.
Possibility of control
At a time when the local council in the city of Derna spoke regarding their expectations of the possibility of evacuating the city completely or partially, in anticipation of the spread of epidemics due to the bodies that began to decompose under the rubble, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Derna, Imad Al-Qabaili, reduces the risks of an environmental disaster, since the bodies are of people who died due to… A natural disaster, not a serious epidemic.
Al-Qabaili did not rule out the existence of health threats, especially following reports of water pollution as a result of the destruction of water and sewage networks in large areas in the center of the city, but he assured Al-Jazeera Net of the possibility of controlling the situation, especially since the surviving neighborhoods are all located in the highlands of Derna, which means that the water flows freely. Reverse towards the affected areas near the sea.
Doctor Mabrouka Al-Maqsabi also agrees with this opinion, explaining that the smells emitted are almost limited to a narrow range so far, as in the vicinity of Al-Wahda Hospital where she works, pointing out that the decomposing bodies in the hospital courtyard belong to foreigners or to families that have completely died, so there is no one to receive those bodies. It speeds up the burial procedures.
Insufficient efforts
Al-Maqsabi spoke to Al-Jazeera Net regarding cases suffering from symptoms of pollution, especially among children who showed symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhea, and high temperatures. In addition, the doctor believes that opening roads, speeding up the recovery of bodies, and accelerating burial operations may keep the situation under control.
For his part, the specialist doctor at the Benghazi Medical Center, Ahmed Ali, confirms that a number of paramedics and rescue teams who arrived at the center began suffering from the appearance of a skin rash, indicating that the situation in Derna in particular is still dangerous and likely to deteriorate.
Doctor Ahmed Ali told Al Jazeera Net, “I do not want to exaggerate the matter, but local efforts are not enough, and our institutions do not have sufficient experience to deal with such situations, and this appeared from the first moments of the disaster,” calling for the need to seek assistance from competent international organizations such as the World Health Organization.
For her part, World Health Organization spokeswoman Margaret Harris described the floods that swept eastern Libya as an “unprecedented humanitarian crisis,” and she considered – in an interview with Al Jazeera – that the urgent matter currently in the affected areas is to enable survivors to access clean and potable water sources, noting. To the possibility of some epidemics spreading through drinking water.
In turn, United Nations humanitarian aid official Martin Griffiths said that Libya needs equipment to find people trapped in the mud and damaged buildings in Derna, stressing – in a press conference – the city’s need for urgent health care, to prevent the spread of cholera among survivors.
Locally, the Minister of Environment in the Libyan National Unity Government, Ibrahim Al-Arabi Mounir, told Al Jazeera that teams affiliated with his ministry are analyzing groundwater in the city of Derna to confirm whether it is contaminated or not, and advised residents not to drink or use groundwater in the city.
The danger goes beyond the tuber
For his part, Doctor Ashraf Hammad participates in the humanitarian and medical aid campaign in the affected areas, and he explained to Al Jazeera Net that the danger goes beyond the city of Derna, which the media focused on, at the expense of small areas, such as “Sousse,” “Wardia,” and Chott “Jarar Amma,” where no No relief teams have reached it yet and suffer potential health and environmental risks.
Hammad told Al Jazeera Net that the extreme poverty of capabilities and dilapidated infrastructure in all areas of Jabal Al Akhdar caused the crisis to worsen. “The number of bodies in the sea, valleys, and floods swept away is very large, and we did not see search teams there as in Derna,” according to his description.
The doctor specializing in veterinary medicine also pointed out the danger of the spread of dead animal corpses, saying, “No one talked regarding them, and they are also one of the causes of epidemics, and the state did not intervene in the process of executing them in the correct ways, so burying them only by citizens would have disastrous consequences for the region,” he said. The approaching winter rains may increase the spread of these diseases.
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