Urgent steps needed to check outbreak of diarrhoea

AT the advent of summer this year, the number of diarrhoea patients has already crossed the recent records. International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, and the other city hospitals are struggling to tackle the surge in diarrhoea patients. The diarrhoea patients admitted to the ICDDR,B has crossed the number admitted during summer in last 12 years where most of the patients are children below 10 years. On Monday 918 diarrhoea patients were admitted there. In the first half of April, ICDDR,B treated 11,751 diarrhoea patients.
According to the newspaper reports, doctors have expressed their astonishment seeing the sudden rise of diarrhoea patients. It is widely speculated that high temperature facilitates the rapid growth of the water borne bacteria, virus or parasites causing diarrhoea. The physicians also blamed consumption of unsafe water and food for spreading the disease. The doctors have also expressed the fears that the number of diarrhoea patients could swell further in the coming days.
The World Health Organization (WHO) in a report had said that over 45,000 under-five children die every year in Bangladesh from diarrhoea caused by contaminated water while the number is over 5, 00,000 globally. The contaminated water also puts people at risk of contracting cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio. In most cases, it’s seen that supply water sometimes remains contaminated with faeces and many people in the poor urban settlements drink it without boiling.
Usually in the summer, the demand of drinking water increases to the people with the increase of temperature. But lack of drinking water supply and awareness among people along with having contaminated fruits from street vendors cause this epidemic. An increased risk for diarrhoea was observed in young children, males, and those staying in rented houses, higher family members in the house, using non-sanitary toilets, living in a community with less use of safe water source for drinking.
What’s most frustrating is that most poor people are less likely to seek care from a professional healthcare provider than from a non-professional healthcare provider, which later attribute to a higher number of diarrhoeal deaths among the children. We do urge the authorities concerned to take urgent steps in this regard.