After Felix, Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast Rots And Roasts - Locals Already Dying From Malaria, GI Bugs

[hatrack]

It is no longer a rainforest but a tree cemetery. As far as the eye can see there are uprooted, bare and broken trunks. The canopy, a roof of foliage so lush you could walk over it, is gone. The few remaining bits of green are no bigger than broccoli.
This is the aftermath of Hurricane Felix along Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast. A smell of decay shrouds the landscape. Crops and livestock have vanished into swamps. So much earth and debris have washed into rivers that they resemble caramel sludge.

Downriver the destruction worsens. Houses built on stilts lean drunkenly and have gaping holes. Many have missing roofs and walls. When you reach the ocean you see they have been spun into the air, Wizard of Oz-style, before smashing and splintering.
Three weeks ago the world watched the hurricane howl towards central America and braced for the worst. It was category five, a monster storm, and a cataclysm seemed inevitable.

But the hurricane changed course and missed big population centres. Instead of cities and tourist resorts it hit this remote wilderness, home to a few fishing and farming communities. A few dozen casualties were reported. The story seemed to be over. The world's gaze shifted elsewhere. A tour through the affected region last week however showed that for Miskito Indians, one of the most impoverished and isolated communities in the Americas, the story is just beginning. Up to 160,000 people are facing an ecological and humanitarian crisis - and it is getting worse.

"It's very possible the aftermath will kill more than the hurricane itself," said Heriberto Cespedes, a surgeon at the main hospital in Puerto Cabezas. "I think in one or two weeks the avalanche of sickness will begin." The residents of hundreds of shattered villages are at risk from hunger, exposure, contaminated water and disease spread by rats and mosquitoes, according to relief agencies. Infants have started succumbing to malaria, dengue and diarrhoea.

EDIT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/naturaldisasters/story/0,,2177270,00.html

[Tian Zhuangzhuang]

1. i don't mean to sound callous.

But if the Miskito Indians are living with nature certainly they have faced hurricanes before in the last 1000 years or so how is this one any different.

In this particular case with this particular population what is wrong with letting nature take it's course with no western meddling.

Isn't this how the Miskito keep a sustainable lifestyle. and shouldn't we encourage this rather than disrupt nature.

[pscot]

2. You could make the same argument

with regard to generic famine relief. Starvation, after all, is nature's way of keeping human populations in balance with the environment. The CATO institute might agree with you, but it's guaranteed flame bait around here.

[philb]

3. There's a new cure for malaria- MMS- takes 1 day I hear

A forum for lyme patients reports that there is a new cure for malaria and Lyme,etc.

MMS sodium hypochlorite ? chlorine dioxide

part one of MMS book by Jim Humble:
http://www.miraclemineral.org/