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TAMARA MCLEAN
November 2, 2009 - 4:44PM AAP The waves have retreated but victims of Samoa's tsunami are facing a
surge of amputations as superbugs hit the country's biggest hospital.
Medics have warned that hundreds of victims of the September 29 disaster
may lose limbs because festering wounds have stopped responding to
antibiotics. Many others are suffering so-called "tsunami lung" after being forced to
swallow polluted sea water under high pressure, and have gone on to
develop pneumonia. "The situation is not good, it's actually very nasty considering most of
these patients were otherwise healthy young and middle-aged people,"
said Teuila Percival, a New Zealand specialist who worked in the
emergency medical team at the main hospital in the capital, Apia. More than 180 people died in the tsunami that also hit Tonga and
American Samoa, including 143 in Samoa. Outbreaks of superbugs, or bugs resistant to antibiotics, are common in
Western hospitals but stringent emergency measures are put in place to
stop their spread. Samoa does not have the processes in place or the range of alternative
antibiotics to cope with such an onslaught, Dr Percival said. She said staff on the ground were finding wounds had stopped responding
to medications, leaving them vulnerable to gangrene. "Without different, non-resistant antibiotics then amputations are the
best answer but that's obviously not ideal," she said. Dozens of others have developed lung disease from ingesting a fast jet
of water contaminated with debris, dirt, sand and bugs. "If that develops into chronic lung disease you may die younger than
should or it could be very life-limiting," she said. "You become a respiratory cripple." The other major health concern emerging a month after the 8.0-magnitude
quake hit the Pacific is the high rate of post traumatic stress disorder. Dr Percival said Samoa's hospital staff had been seeing many serious
cases of anxiety and depression, as well as social problems such as
violence and family breakdowns, as the reality of the quake's impact
sets in. "The main message is that it's not over yet," said the specialist who
heads Pacific health at Auckland University. "We need to keep up our support for the people of Samoa."
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