Polio cases in Syria spark alarm over rise in diseases including flesh-eating parasites due to civil war EXCERPTS: The World Health Organisation has recorded the first suspected outbreak of polio for 14 years in Syria, sparking renewed alarm at the collapse of health care caused by the country's civil war. Doctors in Syria are also seeing a flare-up of typhoid, hepatitis, and the flesh-eating parasite, leishmaniasis, blamed partly on the inability to administer a proper vaccination programme and partly on poor living conditions and a much-reduced access to health care. Some 22 people in the northeastern province of Deir Ezzor are now showing symptoms that are "very likely" to be polio, Oliver Rosenbawer, from the WHO Global Polio Eradication Initiative told The Telegraph. "We still need final confirmation from a laboratory, but all the indicators show that this is polio," said Mr Rosenbawer. For centuries, epidemics of polio, a highly infectious disease that invades the nervous system and can cause paralysis within hours, blighted countries across the globe, leaving hundreds of thousands of children and adults permanently incapacitated. ..... Until this outbreak in Deir Ezzor, in Syria the last recorded case of polio was in 1999. ..... A study by WHO earlier this year found that least 35 per cent of the country's public hospitals had been damaged or destroyed in the conflict, and that in some areas, up to 70 per cent of health workers had fled. ..... In war-riven Aleppo, the summer heat combined with streets filled with putrid, uncollected rubbish, allowed leishmaniasis to thrive. Doctors recorded tens of thousand of cases of the tropical disease, transmitted by sand flies, that causes skin ulcers resembling leprosy. The mass exodus of Syrian civilians fleeing the war is also increasing the risk of conveying diseases that had mostly been eradicated through vaccination back to neighbouring countries. ..... Polio cases in Syria spark alarm over rise in diseases including flesh-eating parasites due to civil war - Telegraph
In a war zone all sort of complications can arise just as in a area devastated by a natural disaster that removes sanitation and medical infrastructure .. Something to keep in mind for our own little chunk of the world..
Overcrowding never helps with sanitation and health issues. Nor does lack of clean water. Of course in a SHTF scenario, alcohol and vinegar can be used for sanitation, but you still need water originally to make them, and you'll still need water to drink and to grow your own food.
