Post News Network
Bhubaneswar: The menace of jaundice in the city is becoming more heightened with a total of 52 cases being detected till Sunday evening by the state public health department in a special screening drive that is being carried out in the capital.
However, officials put the number of jaundice cases at 50.
“In our special screening drive Sunday we detected 12 positive cases of jaundice from the city, particularly from the Jharna Basti. With this, the total number of jaundice cases has risen to 50. We have been intensifying the drive and the infected people have been given urgent medical treatment for cure,” Deben Das, ADMO, state public health department told Orissa POST.
Two more cases of jaundice were also reported from Kargil slum in the city Sunday, which the health department claimed was not caused by the intake of polluted local water but because of outside water sources, according to health department sources.
With the surge in jaundice cases, the municipal body and Capital Hospital administration are also taking various measures to provide relief to the affected population and check the spread of the disease in the vulnerable areas of the city.
A special camp was also organised in the city Sunday to screen people for the disease and provide treatment. Blood tests, urine tests and liver function tests of many people suspected to have jaundice were carried out by a team of doctors from the Capital Hospital Sunday.
The state health department meanwhile claimed that hardly any case was detected from Damana and Patia areas of the city where awareness camps and special drives have been organised by the department. However, Jharna Basti in ward number 53 has been widely affected because of poor water quality.
Officials from the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) Sunday also visited several areas of the city to take a stock of the situation. Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena has now directed the officials concerned to provide water tanks and make arrangements to provide piped water to every household in Jharna Basti where most of the jaundice cases have been detected.
Jena said officials have been asked to construct 70 tube wells in the city and there are plans to have piped water connection in all households.
