More than 60 hospitalised with typhoid in south

More than 60 people have been hospitalised in southern Kyrgyzstan with suspected typhoid over the past three weeks, according to local health officials. Tynybek Jorobaev, director of the provincial sanitary and epidemiological control centre, told IRIN on Wednesday that well over 60 people had been hospitalised in the village of Burgandy in the Nooken district of the southern Jalal-Abad province. "The diagnosis has been confirmed in almost 40 cases and 70 percent of the infected patients are schoolchildren," he said. According to the Kyrgyz health ministry, the outbreak takes the number of typhoid cases registered in Jalal-Abad to 80 since the beginning of the year. Nurbolot Usenbaev, deputy head of the National State Sanitary and Epidemiological Control Department (NSSECD), told IRIN from the capital, Bishkek, that the number of typhoid cases nationwide was almost five times as high as last year, reaching the figure of 255. Local experts blame the consumption of contaminated water and contacts with carriers of the disease as the root causes of the infection. In an effort to mitigate the risk, health teams on the ground are monitoring households in the area, conducting disinfection activities. The distribution of clean potable water by special vehicles has been organised and local authorities have allocated additional funds to purchase disinfectants. The issue is aggravated by the fact that only 20 percent of Burgandy's population of some 14,000 people have access to safe drinking water, Nooken district administration officials said. The local inhabitants and the authorities in Jalal-Abad hope that safe drinking water projects co-financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the local communities could be a solution. However, this programme covers only 130 villages out of more than 420 in the area. Water supply systems have been installed in 23 settlements so far. "We will facilitate these projects whenever possible," Ajimamat Isaev, a department head at the Jalal-Abad governorship, told IRIN. Local NGOs emphasise the importance of continued and systematic work to eliminate typhoid causes. "Outbreaks of typhoid in the mentioned [Burgandy] and nearby rural municipalities have occurred in the past," Akmatjan Mambetaliev, a project coordinator with the Peace Building Group NGO (a local civic group working on conflict prevention in border communities), told IRIN. "Continuous, concerted preventive measures are needed on behalf of the medical institutions, governmental and nongovernmental bodies." The environmental situation of the local cross-border Mailuu-Suu River and its tributaries needed to be tackled, according to the NGO activist. Autumn rains wash down waste from rubbish dumps on river banks as well as human waste and that from cattle-breeding farms, resulting in contamination of the river. Health officials stress the importance of using disinfectants and raising awareness among the local population. "Last time we distributed toilet soap and disinfectants that UNICEF [United Nations Children's Fund] provided and this helped," Usenbaev of NSSECD said, adding that there was a dire need for a few thousand washstands along with chlorine tablets and antibiotics. The health official also proposes the production of handmade devices to filter irrigation and river water. The method is simple: sand, clay and gravel are put in layers on the bottom of a cask one by one to filter harmful particles. "But the truth is that funds are needed for metal or wooden casks. It is a practical temporary solution," Usenbaev said. "It will take years to construct water pipe systems and the issue requires a fast solution," he said.