DIARRHEA OUTBREAK HITS LUANSHYA

LUASHYA has been hit by an outbreak of diarrhea and so far 5000 cases have been recorded, the district health office has confirmed. Director of health in the area John Kabalamba said the diar-rhea outbreak was as result of people drinking contaminated water. Dr. Kabalamba said residential areas affected are Kamirenda, Roan, Mpatamato, Technical and Vocational Teacher’ s College (TVTC). Adjacent areas to the college also recorded increased numbers of cases. He tests carried out on samples taken taken from the college and Kamirenda by the Tropical dis-ease research centre (TDRC) con-firmed the presence of bacteria called E.cola a strong indication of recent sewer. He said the water quality in the district was not safe for consump-tion and emphasised the need to actively tackle the high number of water sources which were report-edly highly contaminated. “From June 2017 to date, the whole district recorded 5,724 cases of diarrhea. The trends was that 74 cases were recorded from the community of which 35 were students on campus at TVTC Col-lege. “Concentrative areas were Kamirenda, Roan, Mpatamato and urban areas. The situation has been necessitated by water quality which the community is consuming,” he said. He said 12 samples were col-lected in the district and after ex-aminations only 4 came out nega-tive. Water in the district is not safe and supply of water by the utility company is erratic prov-ing to be a problem. “Also sam-ples from 806 shallow wells from unplanned settlements namely Minestone and Kamirenda indicated that water is not safe. We are spending K75per sample whenever we submit them for investigations at TDRC,” he said. Dr. Kabalamba said the health office had convened meetings with stakeholders, the church and non - governmental organisations to try and contain the outbreak.

He said the affected areas where inspected, disinfected and chlorine was distributed. He added that health promotions were being carried out in the district.

Meanwhile, Dr Kabalamba said the district had not yet recorded any cholera outbreak but health facilities were stocked with drugs and medical suppliers required.

However, he noted that the health office did not have adequate stocks of liquid chlorine.

He appealed to the business community to partner with the Ministry of health in containing the disease. But Kafubu water and sewerage company acting director of engineering Benard Phiri said independent investigations carried out by the utility company following the report of outbreak of diarrhea disease proved it was not its water sources that were contaminated.

Mr. Phiri said samples from the college indicated that the water contaminated was from the borehole and not from the reservoir that the utility company supplied water to the institution.

Mr Phiri explained that under the Danish Development Agency (DANIDA) project, the utility company was working on improving on water reticulation system.

He said for Mpatamato and Roan, the utility was providing water to the residents using four water bowsers a day to mitigate the impact as works were still ongoing.

For Kamirenda, Mr. Phiri explained that the area was not serviced by the utility company because it was an unplanned settlement.