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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | October 2005 
Top Concern: Health Crisis
 El Universal and wire reports
| | Many of Quintana Roo's hospitals have been seriously damaged and are not admitting patients. (AFP/Alfredo Estrella) |
Winds began to diminish and Hurricane Wilma slowly pulled away from the Yucatan Peninsula on Saturday, leaving behind damaged hospitals ill-equipped to deal with the growing disaster.
Inoperable medical centers and ubiquitous foul-smelling flood waters raised the specter of a health crisis in hurricane ravaged areas like Cancun and Playa del Carmen along the Maya Riviera.
Heliodoro Flores, the head of the emergency room at Cancun's principal hospital said his building is severely damaged and will not be able to meet the demand of incoming patients. The hospital also provides support to Tulum and Playa del Carmen, where another public hospital was heavily damaged Friday.
In addition, the Hospital de Las Americas, a private medical center in Cancun known for its world-class facilities, has been shut down, and the Health Secretariat's general hospital in Cancun is totally inoperable due to storm damage.
With more rain to come, it appears that the flood waters have already mixed with underground sewage, creating nauseating odors and the potential threat of cholera and other infectious diseases.
Making the medical and emergency workers job harder is the lack of electricity and spotty communication systems.
Officials in Cancun estimate at least five days before electricity can be restored to most areas.
Further south, in Playa del Carmen civil defense officials told AFP that the resort town was "destroyed" by powerful Hurricane Wilma.
The small town, south of highrise-laden Cancun, had at least 1,000 homes seriously damaged, said Moisés Ramírez, the town's civil defense chief.
Locals said it was the worst storm they could remember.
"Playa is destroyed. We have water everywhere, all of the power lines are down, we are flooded all over," the distraught official said by phone as he toured his town.
The New York Times reported that mudslides had washed out roads and devastated countless flimsy shacks and jungle cabins that are home to the Yucatan's impoverished people, tens of thousands whose hardscrabble lives are largely hidden from the tourists behind the facades of the elegant high-rise hotels and the postcard-perfect white beaches.
The numbers in these backcountry slums have been swollen by the migration of poor Mexicans seeking work in the booming tourist industry centered around the Mayan ruins and the pristine beach resorts.
Sofia Miselem of AFP and James C. McKinley Jr. and Elisabeth Malkin of the New York Times News contributed to this article. |
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