ICDDR,B receives 450 diarrhoea patients a day

People advised to avoid roadside sharbat
Though the residents of the capital got some respite from the scorching heat as the mercury dipped well below 35 degree Celsius following rainfall that significantly improved the overall situation of water borne diseases, expertes warned people ‘not to be complacent’.
International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B), Dhaka, is receiving around 450 patients, a situation the experts say will continue for some more days.
However, further scorching weather can turn the situation for the worse if people don’t maintain personal hygiene, experts say.
They attributed climate change, lack of safe drinking water for the unusual rise in water borne disease. The scorching weather gives rise to a shortage of safe drinking water, which is the primary cause of high number of patients with water borne ailments.
“People should maintain personal hygiene, should not drink unsafe water and should avoid stale or rotten food,” said Dr Shahadat Husseain, ICDDR,B’s scientist.
He also urged people not to buy cheap road-side sherbet drinks made with contaminated water. If safe water is not available, he said, boiling the water would help stave off infection.
The city witnessed exacerbating diarrhoea situation this year as high temperature and severe power cuts put pressure on water supplies.
Around 1,000 diarrhoea patients a day sought help at ICDDR, B, Dhaka hospital pushing its capacity to the limit as it could only accommodate around 400 patients at a time.
According to the ICDDR, B, 19,000 patients were admitted in March 2009 compared with 7,890 in March 2008. In April 2009 some 23,000 were admitted compared with 13,932 in April 2008.
Over half of those needing treatment at the ICDDR, B are children.Most patients were from the lower income groups, and many had no permanent residence, or safe water supply.
The death toll from the outbreak was 42, most of them dying on the way to treatment centres, according to sources at the Directorate General of Health Service (DGHS).
Piped water is the primary source of safe drinking water in the city; but in the slums where over 1.3 million of Dhaka’s residents live, only one in four households have any form of safe drinking water connection, according to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2005.
Slum-dwellers are being forced to use contaminated sources of water – rivers, ditches, ponds and puddles. Even water supplied by WASA is often murky and foul.
Poor sanitation in many areas was also making matters worse. “E. coli bacteria and rotavirus are primarily responsible for diarrhoeal infections. The heat helps pathogens proliferate faster,” Shahadat said.
“We have been dealing with both kinds of infection in the recent outbreak. Rotavirus infection is predominant among children, while E. coli is the primary suspect for infection among adults,” he said.
He said the more severe cases of dehydration were treated with intravenous rehydration and Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT) accompanied by zinc supplements. Less severe cases, in addition to ORT, were given liquid food.
Diarrhoea is one of the primary causes of child death in Bangladesh. According to research by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in 2004, 36,000 children under five die of diarrhoea every year.

Courtesy of The Independent