Diarrhoea kills 7, hospitalises 454

An outbreak of severe dysentery and diarrhoea on Tanzania's semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar has resulted in the death of seven children with another 454 admitted to hospital, a health official said on Friday. "Most of the cases were of severe dysentery and diarrhoea but without symptoms of cholera," said Dr Omar Suleiman, the director of information policy in the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. He said almost all the cases registered at the Mnazi Mmoja main hospital in Stone Town originated from the Urban District. Health officials, he said, had established that contaminated water was to blame. Suleiman said samples of the water would be sent to Dar es Salaam, the commercial capital of mainland Tanzania. "In Zanzibar we lack modern hospital facilities to make a thorough investigation of the virus, therefore we have to get help," he said. Meanwhile, the Water Department - under the Ministry of Water, Energy, Construction and Lands - is urging the public to boil drinking water. With the continued treatment of drinking water by the department and less rain, he said, the hospital expected a drastic drop in the number of dysentery and diarrhoea cases. The number of children sharing hospital beds had decreased from an average of three in the first week of the outbreak to far fewer now. "Some beds have only one patient," he said. This, he added, was an indication of a decrease in the number of cases. Children make up about 4 percent of Zanzibar's population of one million. Between March and May, at least 20 people died of cholera on the island, with the health ministry blaming water contamination for that outbreak. yi/js/mw/oss