A Pound of Prevention

The death toll from the Asian tsunami rose sharply last week when Indonesia's Health Ministry moved 50,000 of the people on its missing list to the fatalities column, bringing the total there to 166,320. Although the waves have long receded, the tsunami still threatens. For survivors in crowded, unsanitary refugee camps, normally treatable illnesses such as cholera, dysentery, malaria and measles can quickly become mass murderers. So great is the danger that Dr. David Nabarro, the World Health Organization's (WHO) head of crisis operations, initially warned that the death toll from disease could rival that of the tsunami...