A team of health experts has been constituted by the Himachal government to look into the reasons behind the diarrhoea outbreak in the Tauni Devi area of Hamirpur district, the officials stated on Wednesday.
More than 290 people are suffering from diarrhoea and dysentery in at least 27 villages of Tauni Devi of the district, 186 were cured while four were under treatment in the hospital, Chief Medical Officer Hamirpur Dr. RK Agnihotri informed yesterday. As many as 26 teams of the health department have visited 27 affected villages and distributed medicines. The number is on the rise and a report on the new cases would be known by the evening, health officials said.
The five-member rapid response team (RRT) comprises Health Department Deputy Director Dr Yashwant Ranta Dr Kiran Mokta and Dr Anurag from the Department of Microbiology and Medicine from the Indira Gandhi Medical College Hospital (IGMCH) Shimla, a local doctor and Lab Technician Parikshit from the microbiology department of Hamirpur Medical College.
The team members interacted with the patients at Tauni Devi Civil Hospital and also collected water samples from the affected areas. The district health department team has also sent stool samples of the patients from affected areas to the Medical College, Tanda, for testing and the report of these samples will clarify what is the cause of the disease.
Most of the patients are from Gwaradu, Lohakhar, Tauni Devi, Chahad, Tapre, Bari, Mahade, Ghalot, Siswa, Barin, Khandehra, Ladayoh and Jhanikkar villages, the officials said.
"Three days ago I suddenly felt pain in my abdomen followed by vomiting after which I started taking medicines at home, but when I got to know that diarrhoea had spread on a large scale, I went to the hospital on Monday," a male patient in his 30s stated.
A spokesman of the Jal Shakti department said that so far no adverse report of their water had come. Despite this, the department was busy chlorinating the sources and also taking samples from other areas.
It is the third time that the diarrhoea outbreak has been witnessed in the Hamirpur district in the past 14 months of the Congress rule. In January 2023, about 1,000 people were affected by diarrhoea in Rangas area of Nadaun, the home assembly constituency of Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu. Diarrhoea again spread for the second time in ten panchayats adjoining Hamirpur town in June 2023.
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