Diarrhoea Kills two, 60 others still in hospital

PUDUCHERRY: Two persons from Kombakkam who were hospitalised after contracting diarrhoea have died while two others were in serious condition.Out of the 87 admitted since Friday, sixty persons were still undergoing treatment at the Indira Gandhi Government General Hospital and Post Graduate Institute.Shamshud  Begum (52), a psychiatric patient who was also having renal as well as cardiac problems, died at the hospital here while T Ramachandran Pillai (65) died in a private hospital.Since Friday night, diarrhoea cases had been coming in in great numbers, especially from Kombakkam, Kombakkampet and Balaji Nagar. The flow of patients has been stead even on Monday.The two serious cases were being treated in the Intensive Care Unit(ICU). While one of them was a 35-year-old man, reportedly an alcoholic, the other was a 65-year-old person.The cause of the outbreak has been traced to water contamination. Health authorities said that the drinking water was contaminated with sewage through a crack in the pipeline. It has been rectified, they added.Meanwhile, residents led by legislator A Namasivayam staged a road blockade on Monday to condemn the negligence of the authorities and demanded proper action to address the problem.The health department had put up two camps in the area and sent two other teams for door to door survey as well as providing oral re-hydration packets and medicines. The residents were also advised to boil water the before drinking.PWD officials, however, denied water contamination. S Manohar, chief engineer, PWD,  said that out of 14 samples tested from public taps and from the houses of the affected people, most showed no contamination. However, the pathological report of the samples were being awaited to check whether there was any faecal contamination.The other aspect of the problem could be due to unauthorised connections from the main pipeline to individual houses as well as grid connectivity from Over Head Tank (OHT) of the PWD  at Kombakkampet to the OHT in Villianur Commune panchayat at Odiampet. This has now been disconnected, said PWD officials. “We are also exploring all the regions in that area to see if there was any contamination due to breaks or leakages,” said a PWD public health division official.