An early outbreak of diarrhoea has been a cause for serious concern. Usually this disease breaks out in late April almost every year but this time it has announced its ominous arrival from the early March and by the second week the caseloads are on a steep rise. So steep is the rise that more than 1,000 patients were admitted to the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases and Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) for the first time in 60 years on a single day, March 17 last. This is nightmarish for patients, members of their families and the staff at the hospital. Then it is not the ICDDR,B alone that is admitting and treating diarrhoea patients. Other hospitals in the capital including the country's largest of all, the Dhaka Medical College and Hospital are also dealing with such patients.
There must be a reason for the early outbreak of the disease and that too on such a scale. An English contemporary reports that 10 areas of the capital city have been identified for the untimely diarrhoeal spate ---three of them in particular for alarming proportion. This refers to a problem common to all but especially severe in nature among the worst affected. Jatrabari, Dakhhin Khan and Rayer Bazar happen to be the worst case scenarios. Usually a common source happens to be the contaminated water with the presence of e-coli in it. If a large number of people use such a common source, many of them are likely to fall victim to the disease, leading to its mass outbreak. The country's south experiences an outbreak of diarrhoea in the lean season every year. Scientists who visited the affected area last April found e-coli in water people there use. Although people drank tube-well water, they were found to use open water for other purposes.
Jatrabari and Sayedabad are infamous for impure water supplied by the Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority. Rayer Bazar also had problems with water although in recent years there was hardly any complaint. Dakhhin Khan is yet to take a shape of a crowded locality so the water supply system should not take a turn for the worse unless illegal connections are taken with help from naive technicians. Most likely contaminated water is responsible for reporting a large number of cases from those three areas. Unless public health experts and scientists collect water samples from those areas and study other circumstantial evidences for studying and arriving at a conclusion, this however remains only a speculation.
Well, an expert in public health has also hinted at consumption of street or open food. Sure enough, this cannot be ruled out but it is hard to imagine that people from three localities are prone to eating such foods while the locals of seven other are not as voracious eaters of such foods although they are more used to the habit than inhabitants of the rest of the city. Avoiding open and street foods along with the concoction drinks prepared at street corners is one of the important health guidelines but this must not divert attention from the water supplied by the WASA. The quality of supplied water has to be ensured along with making people aware of hygienic use of water for other purposes.