Dhaka - Doctors, paramedics and health workers were braced Friday across Bangladesh to face a raging epidemic of water-borne disease that causes rapid dehydration of the body and can be fatal, health ministry officials said. Authorities of the international Cholera Hospital in the capital Dhaka opened new wards and set up tents in the parking lot of the hospital to cope with the increasing rush of patients struck by diarrhoea, cholera and other intestinal diseases.
An average of nearly 400 infected people in conditions of serious dehydration were reporting daily, a record high for this time of year.
"The number of people coming to the hospital for treatment has crossed records of the past," said Dr Shahadat Hossain who looks after the ward that houses the long-staying diarrhoea and cholera patients.
Hospital files show about 60 per cent of the infected persons seeking hospitalization currently are children from squatter families living in low-lying shanties on the outskirts of Dhaka with little or no access to safe water.
The Health Ministry has called for a nationwide survey of the diarrhoea and cholera situation in the country, said Dr Moazzem Hossain of the disease control centre of the ministry.
The ministry has also ordered hundreds of thousands of saline packets and thousands of saline bags for the treatment of acute dehydration and restoration of the electrolyte balance among patients.
