American experts： Prevention of water-borne infectious diseases should be emphasized after the earthquake.

Xinhuanet Washington, May 22 (Reporter Zhang Zhongxia) Experts from the University of California, Los Angeles recently said in an interview with Xinhua News Agency that after the earthquake, the health department should focus on monitoring water-borne infectious diseases and strengthen epidemic prevention.

Kimberly Shoafur, a disaster medical expert at the Center for Public Health and Disaster of the school, said that if there were some water-borne diseases in the disaster area before the earthquake, generally speaking, the health department would control them through public health measures such as disinfection. The earthquake will inevitably interrupt some health measures, so water-borne diseases may reappear after the earthquake.

Shao Afu said that for this problem, health and epidemic prevention personnel need to make up for the epidemic prevention force in time during the fragile period after the earthquake. Health and epidemic prevention personnel who go deep into the disaster area should also explain to people that the earthquake itself will not cause some infectious diseases and should not cause excessive panic after the disaster.

People in some earthquake-stricken areas may be worried that the decay of the victims’ remains will cause some diseases. In this regard, the expert said that under normal circumstances, many diseases between people are spread through secretions such as droplets in the respiratory tract, or through feces polluting food, water or the environment, and then spread through the way of "disease from the mouth", but the source of transmission must be living. Only when the corpse comes into contact with the water system and spreads the pathogenic bacteria of intestinal diseases can pollution occur, but the cases are limited.

Shao Afu also pointed out that the psychological trauma caused by the earthquake to survivors should be fully paid attention to. Mei Lite Schreiber, an expert who specializes in children’s psychological trauma after the disaster, told Xinhua that in a natural disaster like the Wenchuan earthquake in China, some children suffered serious psychological trauma, and even those children whose relatives survived may have psychological trauma. In the years after the disaster, these children may also have grief, depression and post-traumatic stress reaction.

Schreiber said that at present, there are a series of clinically proven psychological intervention therapies in the medical field, and the treatment targets are divided into adults and children. Psychological relief workers in earthquake-stricken areas in China can quickly determine which children have the most serious psychological trauma according to the mental health identification method in the medical field, and then adopt corresponding psychotherapy for treatment and nursing.