Unhygienic food, water and practices give rise to soaring diarrhoea cases in Dhaka

How to prevent diarrhoea with cases soaring in Dhaka? It’s simple. Shun unhygienic food, water and practices.

What’s the remedy if you catch diarrhoea? It’s also simple. Drink saline and healthy fluids as much as you can to prevent dehydration.

The government, its international partners and non-government organisations have conducted decades of campaigns in Bangladesh to raise awareness about the prevention and remedy of diarrhoea.

And the coronavirus pandemic has put a new sense of hygiene among people.

Still, it’s a luxury for many to follow the hygiene rules.

Bashir Ahmed, a rickshaw-puller who works in Dhaka’s Shanir Akhra, said he mostly eats food and drinks water outdoors because of the nature of job.

“There's no way to know if they [shop keepers] provide me with safe food and water or not,” he told bdnews24.com on Wednesday, a day after he was admitted to the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh or icddr,b with diarrhoea amid a surge in cases.

The icddr,b data showed that an average of 1,240 patients have been admitted every day since last Monday. As at 4pm on Wednesday, 770 patients were admitted.

The 15 patients bdnews24.com spoke to at the icddr,b on Wednesday believe they were infected by the food they had eaten outdoors or drunk water from home or outside of it.

For some, delicious but unsafe street food caused the problem. Ali Asgar, a resident of Mohammadpur, said he ate Jhalmuri, puffed rice with hot spices, from a roadside shop on Monday and had loose and watery stools on that night.

“We always drink boiled water at home. There's a water filter at my father’s shop as well. This happened to my father after eating street food,” said his daughter Nipa, who gave a single name.

Zia Mollah, a resident of the capital’s Shekhertek, said he was at home after catching chickenpox. He does not have street food but sometimes drinks water without boiling it at home when his wife is away. “I'm afraid if this [diarrhoea] is caused by the water.”

Taqsem A Khan, managing director of Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority, claimed its water does not have germs that can cause diarrhoea or cholera.

 He refuted allegations of polluted WASA water giving rise to the ongoing surge in diarrhoea. “The quality of WASA’s water has not changed in the past few months,” he asserted.

ASM Alamgir, chief scientific officer at the government’s Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research, said most of the diarrhoea patients in Dhaka are being infected through polluted water and stale, unsafe food.

People must drink boiled water and avoid street food, he said.

Even homemade food can cause diarrhoea if made with unsafe water, said Dr Baharul Alam, head of hospitals at the icddr,b.

According to the World Health Organisation, the key measures to prevent diarrhoea are access to safe drinking water, use of improved sanitation, and hand-washing with soap.

The measures also include exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, good personal and food hygiene, health education about how infections spread and rotavirus vaccination.

Rotavirus is responsible for about 40 percent of hospitalisations for diarrhoea in children under five years of age, according to the icddr,b.

The WHO says diarrhoea is a symptom of infections caused by a host of bacterial, viral and parasitic organisms, most of which are spread by faeces-contaminated water.

Infection is more common when there is a shortage of adequate sanitation and hygiene and safe water for drinking, cooking and cleaning. Rotavirus and Escherichia coli, are the two most common etiological agents of moderate-to-severe diarrhoea in low-income countries.