Posted on: Thursday, December 30, 2004

Hawai'i doctor warns of disease

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

Less than two weeks ago, Dr. Duane Gubler was walking the streets of Galle in Sri Lanka, heading a World Health Organization team assessing the country's response to dengue hemorrhagic fever.

Today, Gubler, who heads the Asia Pacific Institute of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease at the University of Hawai'i John A. Burns School of Medicine, wonders if some of the people he met are still alive, and has been in e-mail contact with the Sri Lankan team members who did survive Sunday's devastating southeast Asia tsunami.

Gubler, an international expert in infectious diseases, stands ready to be of assistance, but notes that the World Health Organization's Southeast Asian regional office in New Delhi, India, is well equipped with infectious disease specialists.

"The biggest concern would be bacterial contamination of the water. Typhoid is not uncommon — it gets into the wells — so diseases like typhoid and cholera could be a problem," he said. "But right now the critical thing is to get food and water and shelter for the people so they don't get sick. Surviving is what it essentially comes down to."

Gubler said dengue hemorrhagic fever and malaria would not be immediate problems in the wake of the tsunami because flooding would destroy mosquitoes in the larval stage by wiping out breeding sites. "In two or three weeks you'll have to worry about that because by then there will be a large brood of mosquitoes," he said. "But they'll have time to prepare for that."

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.