Are Ripe for Disease A Dutch doctor treats a young Albanian boy inside a medical tent at a NATO refugee camp in Stankovac near Skopje, Macedonia. Click on the image to find out what medical supplies doctors bring. For ethnic Albanians, fleeing Kosovo is just the first step in a battle for survival. By the time they cross the border, most are weak and exhausted from days of trekking through cold and rain, often without food or water.
Poor sanitation makes the muddy camps a breeding ground for bacteria.
And with tens of thousands of people crowded close together, communicable diseases such as measles can spread like wildfire. The fact that they've had no easy access to health care, no easy access to sanitation, that makes them more vulnerable to disease. Children at Risk Conditions at the camps were particularly bad early on, with refugees defecating near water supplies and sleeping in muddy, feces-covered fields. But in the past week relief agencies have dug latrines, trucked in clean water and set up makeshift medical tents. Physicians at the camps say the majority of the illnesses they've treated have been upper respiratory infections, such as pneumonia, and gastrointestinal infections, most commonly diarrhea and dysentery.