Byo Polytech diarrhoea outbreak confirmed

05 Jul, 2014 - 23:07 0 Views

The Sunday News

A RECENT diarrhoea scare that hit the Bulawayo Polytechnic and saw hundreds of students being treated for varying degrees of the ailment, has seen the Bulawayo City Council (BCC) fingering the possible cause as borehole water at the college with inconclusive results stating that one of the college’s boreholes was contaminated.
The scare which hit the institution a couple of weeks ago saw most students staying within campus having to be rushed to hospital for treatment, with the BCC health department and the Matabeleland North Medical Directorate having to immediately dispatch teams to investigate the issue.

The city health department has since confirmed a diarrhoea outbreak after discovering Shigella organisms in students’ stool samples.
According to emedicine.medscape.com Shigella organisms “are aerobic, nonmotile, glucose-fermenting, gram-negative rods that are highly contagious, causing diarrhoea after ingestion of as few as 180 organisms”.

The results released by the BCC last week also revealed that one out of the two sampled boreholes at the college had contaminated water which could have led to the outbreak.

BCC public relations officer Miss Bongiwe Ngwenya, however, ruled out that the outbreak could have been caused by council water noting that of the eight water points sampled only one had come out contaminated and this had been because of poor sample collection.

“Of the water sampled from Municipal points, there was contamination from one Municipal point out of eight points which were sampled at Bulawayo Polytechnic, the contamination was considered to have been due to poor sample collection technique for that particular point.
“One sampled borehole water point out of two was contaminated,” said Miss Ngwenya.

She said the results showed that there was a 50 percent chance that the diarrhoea could have emanated from the borehole water.
“Initially the feeling was that the diarrhoea started after students drank council water or the college canteen had cooked using council water. Naturally we took these allegations very seriously which is why we immediately sent our staffers to investigate the matter.

“We not only tested council water at the college, we also took samples from the boreholes and also from points surrounding the Polytechnic and our city health department found that there was a 50 percent chance that the cause could have been the borehole water as one of the samples came out positive for contamination,” said Miss Ngwenya.

She, however, called on the general public to maintain basic health standards to prevent outbreaks.
Officials at the college confirmed that the diarrhoea could have been caused by the borehole water alleging that there had been a water cut the day students began to experience running tummies.

“That weekend we experienced a water cut and we had to resort to the borehole water. However, the problem is that the institution does not want to acknowledge that the problem was with the borehole water and instead they are somehow on denial.

“It is now clear that the borehole water cannot be used but up to now no one is coming out clean or closing off the boreholes totally until further tests are done,” said an official from the Polytechnic.

Contacted for comment, Bulawayo Polytechnic principal, Mr Gilbert Mabasa alleged that they had not received any results from any of the medical teams that had been tasked to investigate the matter.

“Disease outbreaks can breakout from anywhere and spread in any direction. Insinuating that they are confined to one institution or region can give the public a false sense of security. Unless the cause of anything is known, it is impossible to guarantee control of its effect,’’ he said.

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