Outbreak of gastro enteritis has claimed the life a 35-year-old woman in Odisha's Kendrapara district and about 25 locals affected by the water-borne disease were hospitalised, officials said today.
A medical team is stationed in the affected Kiyarbanka village for round-the-cloak monitoring of the situation, said officials adding "we are trying our best to prevent things from assuming epidemic proportion".
Contaminated drinking water led to gastro's outbreak. Premalata Nayak died of gastro enteritis on Friday, said Kendrapara Chief District Medical Officer (CDMO), Shantilata Sharma adding sources of drinking water are being disinfected.
The village has 2000-strong population. However, there is only one deep-dug tube well to meet with drinking water requirement of the said villagers. As a result, locals consumed contaminated water from unsafe sources, she said.
A sizeable number of affected people are either women or children from the predominantly backward locality, where the sources of drinking water are either dried up due to the heat wave, or where the sources of potable water are unsafe for human consumption.
An alert has been sounded in the affected locality and adequate preventive measures are on to contain the disease.
Water borne diseases have become a recurring problem in these coastal areas with acute scarcity of drinking water even as water sources from government-dug tube wells have got salinised.
