Disease rife as Philippines expects typhoon

An emergency team of medics is on its way to the flood-hit Philippines after disease has killed more than 140 people and left nearly 2,000 sick. Leptospirosis, spread by contaminated water, has hit the capital Manila after storms in September killed more than 900 people and devastated northern regions. The country was last night (Thursday) bracing itself for more bad weather as forecasters predict Typhoon Lupit is set to bring winds gusting at more than 120 miles.

Over the last month, two storms, Ketsana and Parma, struck the South East Asian country, causing flooding and landslides. More than 800 people were killed. A team of soldiers and paramedics put together by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has been mobilised with rescue boats, trucks and emergency supplies. Meanwhile more than100 government buildings have been put on standby in case they need to be used as evacuation camps. The country’s health secretary Francisco Duque said at least 148 people had died in the leptospirosis outbreak and 1,963 were infected in Manila and its surrounding suburbs. Cases have also been reported in the nearby provinces of Rizal and Laguna, Mr Duque said.Leptospirosis is a fatal bacterial infection acquired when contaminated water comes into contact with unhealed cuts in the skin, eyes or mucous membranes.

The health emergency team will help the Philippines government, said Adam Craig, a spokesman for the WHO in Manila. "It's a big issue, and there's obviously still floodwater around, which means there's still people at risk," he told Sky news."They will be predominantly looking at how to get people into hospitals and how to treat them properly so we can reduce the number of deaths," he said. The Leptospirosis outbreak happened after Tropical Storm Ketsana saw one month's worth of rain fall in Manila and outlying areas, this time last month, causing the worst flooding in more than 40 years and killing 464 people. Then only week later, Typhoon Parma battered the northern Philippines, causing landslides and floods that killed 438 people. The Philippines government said nearly 1.3 million people were still living in flooded conditions, while 200,000 were in emergency camps.

Earlier this week a United Nations official described poverty in the Philippines group of islands as at an "unacceptable" level, years after it joined dozens of other countries in pledging to reduce the number of impoverished people by half by 2015. One in three Filipinos lives on $1 a day, 5 million children are out of school and 93 newborn babies and 11 mothers die each day - numbers that are still alarmingly high, said Salil Shetty, director of the United Nations Millennium Campaign. He visited the Philippines as part of a U.N. anti-poverty drive in Asia. The Philippines expects even more storms to hit in the coming months as typhoon season continues through December.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children