The number of patients in hospitals is increasing as diarrhoea is increasing at an alarming rate in and around the capital. According to the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), more than a thousand patients are admitted there every day. In 12 days, the number of patients exceeded 13,483. It is learned that these diarrhoea patients are coming from Jatrabari, Sayedabad, Shanir Akhra, Mohammadpur, Tongi and Uttara of the capital. However, not only icddr,b, but also other public and private hospitals are admitting a lot of diarrhoea patients. Many patients are receiving treatment from home.
According to the icddr,b, they have not had so many patients since the organisation began operations 60 years ago in 1982. The first highest number of diarrhoea patients came to the hospital in 2007. At that time an average of one thousand patients came every day. During the outbreak of diarrhoea in 2018, an average of 1,057 patients were admitted every day.
Although there have been no reports of deaths from diarrhoea so far this year, we have no chance to stay calm. First, the source of the waterborne disease must be found. Dhaka WASA provides drinking water in and around Dhaka. There are many complaints about the quality of water of the organisation. In particular, their supply lines are filled with waste, and in many areas contaminated yellow water comes from WASA pipe, which poses a serious threat to public health.
WASA Managing Director Taqsem A Khan claimed that the water of Dhaka WASA is completely pure. In 2019, a resident of Jatrabari went to the WASA office with dirty water and threw a challenge, but he did not dare to accept it. Not only Jatrabari, in most parts of Dhaka the water supplied by WASA is unfit for human consumption. According to the TIB survey, WASA's water quality is poor and customers have to boil water and burn gas worth Tk 3.32 billion a year.
No matter what WASA says, one of the sources of water borne diseases is Dhaka WASA water. Especially low-income people, who do not have access to boiled water, have to drink dirty water and it spreads diarrhoea. Apart from this, the disease can also be spread from the water and food provided by the cheap hotels and restaurants on the side of the road.
Mushtuq Hosain, an adviser to the government's Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) and a former scientific officer at the institute, said the diarrhoea virus was breeding at the time. The corona situation has led to an increase in hand washing among the general public in the last two years. They also ate less outside. As corona infections have decreased, so has the habit of hand washing, and so has the tendency to eat at roadside hotels and restaurants increased. That has resulted in increase of diarrhoea.
Spokesman and director (disease control) of Directorate General of Health Services Professor Nazmul Islam advised people to stay careful about diarrhoea. No one should disagree about raising public awareness. But who will warn the Dhaka WASA that is responsible to provide water to Dhaka dwellers? They are increasing the price of water from time to time, but they are not able to supply pure drinking water. Dhaka WASA cannot avoid the responsibility for the sudden increase in the diarrhoea cases in and around Dhaka.