Indore (Madhya Pradesh) [India], December 30 : Several people fell ill after consuming contaminated water in Madhya Pradesh's Indore on Tuesday, an official said.
Dr Madhav Hasani, Chief Medical and Health Officer (CMHO), said the health department received alerts from private hospitals about an unusually high number of patients reporting symptoms of vomiting and diarrhoea.
According to Dr Hasani, the exact cause of the illness is yet to be established.
"Yesterday, we received information from private hospitals that they were seeing an unusually high number of patients with vomiting and diarrhoea... By evening, we had received reports from 7-8 hospitals that approximately 32 patients had been admitted. The reason behind this is not clear yet; we have collected the samples of water from patients' residences... In 48 hours, we will also receive the report... No deaths have been reported so far due to diarrhoea," Dr Hasani said.
The CMHO further explained that a house-to-house survey was conducted on Monday, covering more than 1,100 houses. ORS packets, zinc supplements and chlorine tablets were distributed, and residents were advised to consume only boiled water. These activities continued on Tuesday as well. Additional teams of doctors have been deployed to visit homes to examine residents, provide medications, and advise them to drink boiled water.
"Preliminary assessment suggests that water contamination could be the cause of the illness, although the final report is still awaited. Nonetheless, there is neither an issue of food poisoning nor is it a viral disease, and the cases are confined to a single area. Therefore, there is a strong possibility that the outbreak has occurred due to contaminated water," the CMHO said.
Additionally, he stressed that all private hospitals were instructed not to charge patients any fees for treatment, and the state government would bear the cost of treatment.
"As far as deaths are concerned, there has been no report of any death due to diarrhoea or caused by lack of treatment. However, information about three deaths has emerged due to other reasons and two of them were not in contact with the health department and died at their homes. Also, one of them was suffering from paralysis and died due to multi-organ failure. So far, there has been no report of death of any patient admitted to a hospital," he said.