Typhoid fever has been a cause of concern in Guihulngan and Mabinay towns in Negros Oriental, according to a report from the Regional Epidemiology and Surviellance Unit in Central Visayas (RESU-7). {{more}}
Since January, there have been 54 typhoid cases in Guihulngan and 46 cases in Mabinay with one death for each of the two towns.
Typhoid fever is caused by the intake of contaminated water or food and is second to dengue as the highest morbidity causing disease in Central Visayas.
Symptoms of typhoid fever include high fever, joint pains, yellowish eyes and tongue, and stomach pains.
Nurse Rennan Cimafranca of RESU-7 urged households in Central Visayas to boil their drinking water to make sure that it would be safe to drink.
A total of 837 typhoid cases in Central Visayas were reported from January to August this year, the RESU-7 report said, but these figures were lower than last year’s 997 cases.
Cimafranca told reporters that the typhoid cases in Central Visayas might be due to the lack of monitoring of the local government units (LGUs).
Contaminated water causing typhoid could be due to lack of proper chlorination of the water systems, which was either managed privately or by the local government, he said.
“If the LGUs are the ones that monitor and operate the water system, then the bigger problem occurs,” Cimafranca said.
Cimafranca said that only 60 percent of the water system in Central Visayas were fully developed and were using chlorinator machines, which would sustain the needed volume of chlorine level.
He said the rest of the public and private water systems were still using manual chlorination, which was not an ideal way to treat water because there would be no consistency on the chlorine level needed to kill the bacteria that would cause the disease. (AP)
- Advertisement -