Fears over typhoid outbreak

Some 200 people have been hospitalised with suspected Typhoid in the southern Tajik province of Khatlon following an outbreak in the Bokhtar district, aid workers told IRIN on Thursday. "Fifty-three cases have been confirmed and the number could rise," programme coordinator for Merlin, a UK-based NGO, Davide Zappa, in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe said. Cases have been identified in six villages situated in the district of Bokhtar in Khatlon. "One branch of the Bokhtar district canal irrigation system has been infected by the typhoid bacteria," he explained. As tests continue on water samples from the area, it was suspected that the spread of typhoid in the villages was due to contamination of the canal water by a source not yet determined, according to health experts for the NGO. In response to the outbreak, Merlin has provided antibiotics, chloramine tablets, along with five mt of chlorine-lime. Other items include thermometers, bedpans, plastic water containers and basins and soap bars. A team of six doctors and two health education teams comprised of eight officers from Merlin was responding to the situation, he added. In addition, Zappa stressed it was important to educate the population on health issues. Health education teams were mobilised and reached thousands of people by holding sessions in cotton fields, on roadsides in mosques and houses, he added. Meanwhile, the UN has also provided assistance for those suffering from the disease in hospital, due to the lack of medical facilities in the country. "We are coordinating the distribution of food to the patients in hospital, donated by AAR, a Japanese NGO," Humanitarian Officer for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Dushanbe, Andrea Recchia, told IRIN. In this poverty stricken country where the health system is struggling to serve the country and the health budget only stretches to US $1 per person per year in a population of six million, it is clear why such diseases can spread easily. "This country has chronic vulnerability and contagious diseases are difficult to control," Recchia added.