Infection risk after Chile earthquake

HUGE piles of wreckage, tons of rotting fish and other debris blanketing the ground are turning the coastal towns shattered by Chile's earthquake and tsunami into nests of infection.

As Chileans lined up for hepatitis and tetanus shots on the opening day of an extensive vaccination campaign, doctors warned that cases of diarrhoea were increasing as a result of unclean water and a growing number of patients were suffering injuries wading through the mess.

"We are going to keep needing water, electric systems, a functioning sewage system. We need to clean up rotting fish in the streets. We need chemical toilets, and when it starts raining, people living in tents are going to get wet and sick. All this is going to cause infections," said Talcahuano mayor Gaston Saavedra.

The government faces other healthcare problems as a result of the earthquake and tsunami on 27 February.

Looting of chemists has made medicine scarce for people suffering from diabetes, hypertension and psychological illnesses, and 36 hospitals were heavily damaged or destroyed in the quake.

Mobile hospitals from half a dozen foreign countries were scheduled to open – an unusual situation for a country that proudly sends rescue and relief teams to the world's trouble spots.

However, donor nations have been figuring out how to co-ordinate with Chile's advanced, if wounded, public health system before beginning operations, which means the foreign units are still not treating victims a week after the disaster.

A Peruvian field hospital opened in Concepcion last week, with three operating rooms and 28 beds. But surgeons and trauma specialists stood with their arms crossed on Friday, still waiting for patients to be sent by local health officials.

Luis Ojeda, a Spanish doctor working with Doctors Without Borders, said his team arrived on Monday but was still waiting for Chile's instructions on where to deploy.

"This country is atypical," Ojeda said, adding he had spent his time checking on the displaced in tents.

Chile signed an operating agreement for a US field hospital on Friday, enabling 57 US military personnel to work side by side with civilian Chilean doctors in coming days to support a population of 3,000 in the town of Angol. Two US Air National Guard C-130 transport planes were en route to Chile to help deliver supplies.

In Rancagua, a Cuban field hospital was fully operational.

Chile's health ministry said there had been no outbreaks of dysentery or other communicable diseases and it had enough tetanus and hepatitis vaccinations for the disaster zone.

Field hospitals being provided by Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Peru, Spain and the US are meant to relieve 36 heavily damaged or destroyed Chilean hospitals, including Santiago's now-closed 522-bed Felix Bulnes Hospital. Brazil's emergency field hospital was sent to western Santiago to pick up the slack.

Powerful aftershocks on Friday forced the evacuation of an older wing of Concepcion's five-storey regional hospital.

Doctors could not access clean scalpels because a sterilisation room was too dangerous to enter. Peruvian doctors donated their sterilising equipment, which was quickly put to use for the amputation of four infected toes from Aaron Valenzuela, who stepped on broken glass on Monday while looking for drinking water.

He was sent home after surgery because of the hospital damage. "They threw us all out and told us to go home," Valenzuela said as he limped away.