by JOEL CALAMBA ESCOL, Managing Editor
PIKIT, North Cotabato – The lack of potable drinking water has caused the hospitalization of at least 30 residents in a small village in Pikit, this province.
The North Cotabato Integrated Provincial Health Office (IPHO) said Tuesday the 30 residents were hospitalized due to typhoid fever.
Dr. Eva Rabaya, North Cotabato provincial health officer, said the patients were all residents of
the village who had taken unsafe drinking water since the last week of December.
“No one was reported to have died among the patients,” Rabaya said in a radio interview.
The patients all came from Manaulanan, a remote village with no potable drinking water.
Majority of the residents just buy commercially available mineral drinking water in gallons or bottles but the indigents get their drinking water from water pumps and open wells.
The IPHO has already sent a team of health experts to help the municipal health office of Pikit town contain the rising number of typhoid fever cases.
Quoting a report from the Pikit municipal health office, Rabaya said the outbreak could be due to contaminated drinking water that people sourced from open wells and water pumps.
“Many of the patients were children who are now in various hospitals in Pikit,” Rabaya said.
She said the team from the IPHO who was tasked to assess the situation has brought medicines and water purification tablets to help prevent the spread of typhoid fever and other waterborne diseases in the area.
