SYDNEY: The death toll from a major earthquake that struck Papua New Guinea last month has risen to 125, police said Wednesday, amid concern that an outbreak of disease will see it jump further.
A 7.5-magnitude quake struck the Pacific nation’s mountainous interior on February 26, burying homes and causing landslides, making it hard to reach isolated villages.
Police said the toll had now reached 125, up from 100 last week, as more news filtered in from remote communities.
“From the reports received at the command centers, 45 have died so far in the Southern Highlands and in Hela province 80 people are confirmed dead,” the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary said in a statement.
“It is expected that the figure might increase once all people have been accounted for.”
It added that 15,000 people had been displaced in the Southern Highlands and at least 20,000 in Hela, with many now in temporary shelters. Schools remain closed.
While aid is finally reaching remote areas, doctors warned that public health issues must also be urgently addressed, with fears disease will kill even more people.
“Food-borne and water-borne diseases are just two of the many diseases that many may die from if we don’t start addressing the issues now,” Sam Yockopua, head of emergency medicine at the government’s Health Department, told The National newspaper.
“For example, from one of the areas that health officers recently visited, 80 people came in with injuries caused by the earthquake, while more than 100 came in to be treated for food-borne and water-borne diseases.”
Prime Minister Peter O’Neill said Australian doctors were being recruited to help manage the crisis.
“In the next few days or weeks, the waterborne diseases will affect the affected population and areas, we have to lift our presence in medical support,” he said.
Earthquakes are common in PNG, which sits on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, a hotspot for seismic activity due to friction between tectonic plates.
Papua New Guinea quake death toll rises to 125
Papua New Guinea quake death toll rises to 125
Sequestered Suu Kyi overshadows military-run Myanmar election
- Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad has been heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis
YANGON: Ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been siloed in military detention since a 2021 coup, but her absence looms large over junta-run polls the generals are touting as a return to democracy.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was once the darling of foreign diplomats, with legions of supporters at home and a reputation for redeeming Myanmar from a history of iron-fisted martial rule.
Her followers swept a landslide victory in Myanmar’s last elections in 2020 but the military voided the vote, dissolved her National League for Democracy party and has jailed her in total seclusion.
As she disappeared and a decade-long democratic experiment was halted, activists rose up — first as street protesters and then as guerrilla rebels battling the military in an all-consuming civil war.
Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad has been heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis.
But for her many followers in Myanmar, her name is still a byword for democracy, and her absence on the ballot, an indictment it will be neither free nor fair.
The octogenarian — known in Myanmar as “The Lady” and famed for wearing flowers in her hair — remains under lock and key as her junta jailers hold polls overwriting her 2020 victory. The second of the three-phase election began Sunday, with Suu Kyi’s constituency of Kawhmu outside Yangon being contested by parties cleared to run in the heavily restricted poll.
Suu Kyi has spent around two decades of her life in military detention — but in a striking contradiction, she is the daughter of the founder of Myanmar’s armed forces.
She was born on June 19, 1945, in Japanese-occupied Yangon during the final weeks of WWII.
Her father, Aung San, fought for and against both the British and the Japanese colonizers as he sought to secure independence for his country.
