NEW ORLEANS — Authorities said Monday that some of Hurricane Katrina's evacuees have contracted a bacterial disease that is considered a more benign cousin of cholera, but is potentially fatal in people whose immune systems have been compromised.
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said the bacterium, \o7vibrio vulnificus\f7, might have been picked up by people with open wounds who were forced to wade through polluted floodwaters for a long time.
Von Roebuck, a CDC spokesman, said officials had detected the disease among some storm evacuees and stragglers but had not been able to determine how many cases there were. It does not appear that anyone has died from the disease, Roebuck said.
Since flooding began, authorities have predicted that New Orleans could be stricken with a host of diseases, particularly as unretrieved bodies remained in the water. This appears to be the first confirmation of illness caused by the storm and the flood.
New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said Monday that the possibility of epidemics was a critical concern.
"The water quality in the streets continues to deteriorate," Nagin said. "There is some really nasty looking stuff out there. I worry about it every day. The more time that passes, there are more dead bodies left floating, and more mosquitoes breeding and hatching. They bite people who are dead."
Nagin said he was concerned about a widespread outbreak of the potentially fatal West Nile virus. For two days, he has called upon the federal government to provide crop dusters that can coat the city with chemicals to kill mosquitoes breeding in the floodwaters. That had not occurred by Monday evening.
He said he was also concerned about airborne toxic hazards and natural gas in the area.
Those health threats are why every resident must leave the city -- even those living on dry land, Nagin said, adding that they "will be able to come back."
\o7Vibrio vulnificus \f7belongs to the same family as cholera -- and those stricken with the bacterium were discovered, officials said, only because tests were done amid false reports that cholera had been discovered among evacuees.
Among healthy people, \o7vibrio vulnificus \f7causes vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain but is generally not life-threatening. It can be readily cured with antibiotics such as doxycycline or cephalosporins, with no long-term effects.
