Typhoid cases grow with temperature rise

With the mercury rising, five to six typhoid cases are reported daily at the city’s hospitals on average. Doctors anticipate the number of patients complaining about this food and water borne disease growing in the coming days, citing the likely increase in water and food consumption as one reason in this regard.

Sharif Astori of Polyclinic said five to seven fresh cases of typhoid are reported daily at the hospital. Doctors at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) and the CDA Hospital put the number of typhoid cases reported to them daily at six to seven and four to five respectively. Mostly, children complain about the disease, they said. According to doctors, drinking contaminated water and eating unhealthy food, poor sanitation and people’s neglect of personal hygiene are the major causes of typhoid. They said the increasing consumption of cold beverages prepared on roadsides and food stored in refrigerators spoilt by frequent power outages had lead to an increase in typhoid cases in Islamabad.

They informed Daily Times that their hospitals had typhoid medicines in good supply and had been facing no difficulties in treating patients complaining about the disease.

After the setting in of summer, private hospitals and clinics have also witnessed a gradual surge in the cases of this infectious disease.

Dr Asma Rehman, who runs a private clinic in F-10/3, said she received 12 to 15 patients, mostly children and youths, each week with symptoms of typhoid. She feared the number would further increase in the coming days with the rising temperatures. She said children drinking unboiled water mostly fell victim to the disease. She regretted parents and teachers’ negligence in this respect. Dr Rehman said salmonella typhi bacteria living in human bodies caused typhoid and that people suffering from the disease carried the bacteria in their bloodstream and intestinal tract.

According to doctors carriers recover from typhoid fever in some cases but continue to carry the bacteria. Both ailing people and carriers shed bacteria in stool. Typhoid fever occurs due to the use of food or water, either handled by a contaminated person, or contaminated with sewage.

They said typhoid spreads fast among people and in places where proper sanitation and hygiene are not taken seriously. “In our country, unfortunately, there are several such places where people are subjected to various kinds of fatal diseases, including typhoid due to a lack of awareness,” said Dr Rehman.

She said industrialised countries were free from typhoid but that developing countries were still facing this serious public health problem. Referring to official statistics, doctors said 1,000 in every 100,000 Pakistanis suffered from typhoid each year. They stressed the need for sincere efforts on the part of health authorities to raise awareness about this easily preventable disease. “In this way, people will not only be spared the suffering, but will also be able to save millions of rupees spent on expensive diagnoses and the treatment of typhoid each year,” they said.

Doctors also blamed the Capital Development Authority’s negligence in ensuring clean drinking water to the city and said that drinking water gets contaminated with sewage due to broken pipelines in certain areas.

When a CDA spokesperson was contacted, he acknowledged that the authority had received some complaints regarding a contaminated water supply in some areas. He said orders had been issued for the repair of the broken water pipelines. He added that the CDA had installed water purification plants across the city that were providing adequate drinking water to residents.
source:www.dailytimes.com.pk