North West gastro outbreak under control, says Ramsaran

-252 cases reported up to last week

There were 252 cases of gastroenteritis reported in Region One’s North West District up to the end of last week, but Health Minister Dr. Bheri Ramsaran yesterday assured that the outbreak is under control.

“The ministry has been on top of the issue even before it was highlighted by the media,”

Shamdeo Persaud
Shamdeo Persaud

Ramsaran told reporters during a press conference on the outbreak, which has hit the North West District hard since the start of the year.

The ministry yesterday confirmed that the outbreak, which has been linked to the E.coli bacteria, has claimed the lives of two children while it is still to classify a third child who died.

The report cases continue to rise, Stabroek News was told yesterday, as more persons suffering from vomiting and diarrhoea are turning up at the hospitals in the region. There was no official word from the ministry on the outbreak until Stabroek News reported that there had been two deaths.

Chief Medical Officer Dr. Shamdeo Persaud was more cautious than Ramsaran in giving an assessment of the situation. He told reporters that the outbreak peaked at about week eight, which would have been about the third week in February. He said that while monitoring has shown a decrease, all persons need to be cautious as most of these types of outbreaks have a double peak.

He noted that the second peak “sometimes can bring a higher level of mortality and it is associated with the ones who are the weakest, the ones with the least resistance.” He said that the ministry does not want to send a message that “this is over with. We want people to put stronger measures in place.”

Persaud explained that the ministry and all the regional health departments have an ongoing surveillance system that collects information weekly on all the syndromes, including gastroenteritis.

As a result, it noticed that from the start of the year the situation has been stable. “Meaning: that the normal or usual amount of expected cases were recorded,” he said. However, by the second week of February there were signs of an increase in cases coming out of Region One as a whole and more specifically from some of the areas around Port Kaituma, including Sebai.

On February 20, an evaluation was done by the regional health officer and he concluded that the cases were clustered in the upper part of Sebai. As a result, a team from Georgetown travelled to the area and a further assessment was done. Ramsaran said “the first shout led us to a certain logging operation on the Sebai River.”

“Immediately they were able to recognise that it was due to the water because the turbidity in the river had increased tremendously from what it was,” Persaud added, while noting that during that same week areas closer to Port Kaituma along Canal Bank started to report an increased number of cases. By week seven going on to week eight, reported cases were from the wider Port Kaituma area.

According to Persaud, the cases from Sebai by then were more than 75 percent of what was expected. By the end of last weekend, he said there was a total of 44 cases reported from Sebai; 112 from Canal Bank (the dredged out part of the Port Kaituma River where the ferry usually lands) and 96 cases from the central Port Kaituma area inclusive of Citrus Grove, Oronoque and Four Miles.

There were two reported deaths during the sixth week: two-month-old Zashada Bumbury of Sebai and seven-month-old Steve Adams of Canal Bank. Persaud told reporters that the post-mortem of the child in the first case showed that she died of severe dehydration due to acute gastroenteritis. He said that the second child also had diarrhoea and dehydration.  The death of a third child, he added, has not been classified since though he had symptoms of gastro, he was also hit by a bout of vivax malaria the week before his death.

‘Quite extensive’

According to Persaud, so far samples of water taken from several wells and river sources all showed that they were of an unacceptable standard. He said that observation was made in the case of the solar powered wells of Sebai. “…The contamination was quite extensive. The organism identified in all of these instances is E.coli and there was contamination from human waste,” he reported.

He said regional health officials were able to assess the disposal of garbage and said that there are reports of residents dumping garbage into the river. This occurs even though there are provisions for disposal at Port Kaituma.

Residents in other areas, he noted, most times dump and burn their garbage at the back of their homes. In communities such as Canal Bank and Sebai, he added, it was found that it was not garbage but human waste disposal that is the problem. Some of the pit latrines were in close proximity to the river, he said, while adding that this occurred even though regulations outline the distances that should be observed. As a result, he said, there would be efforts to have the latrines relocated.

Persaud also said that the ministry was informed that persons in the mining area in the Port Kaituma area were told to cease operations following the observation of turbidity in the water. They were told to correct those issues, he said, further adding that the ministry has been unable to ascertain whether those orders were adhered to although the health team in the area has reported that some mining activities are continuing.

According to Dr. Persaud the Ministry intends to focus on health education and is distributing bleach, water treatment tablets and packets of oral hydration solution to residents of the community. He said that health officials are also advising residents as to how they can manage and control diarrhoea.

He said that the health team has also made suggestions for the water supply system at Port Kaituma, which is of a major concern, especially since most of the most recent cases seem to be originating from the area. Among the suggestions, he said, is for the provision of treated water to households.

Meanwhile, Ramsaran noted that over the past few days, the number of affected persons has increased and this has caused the Ministry of Health to mount a bigger response.

He said that the outbreak is being tackled through a joint response effort with the Ministry of Local Government, the Ministry of Housing and Water as well as agencies such as the Civil Defence Commission, UNICEF and PAHO.

Ramsaran added that “simple, basic things advised by the ministry are not being followed. Even the latrines are being constructed too close to water supplies. These are basic things that we need to appeal to citizens to protect their own health and the health of their community.”

Meanwhile, main opposition APNU yesterday criticized the government for a “slow and inadequate response” to what it dubbed a “health crisis” in Region One.

In a statement, APNU said that the central government and regional administration are well aware of the problem which affects residents recurrently in riverine and hinterland communities and called on Ramsaran, Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment Robert Persaud, Minister of Housing and Water Irfaan Ali and Minister of Local Government and Regional development Ganga Persaud to respond quickly to the crisis and to enforce environmental safety regulations to protect the lives of residents.