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Typhoid claims four lives in Tohana
Sushil Manav

Fatehabad, May 27
Typhoid fever has so far claimed four lives at Tohana near here. Four persons, including two children, died at Tohana yesterday due to typhoid fever.

Two children, Gagan (3) and Pawan (6), died at a private nursing home at Tohana last evening. According to doctors attending on them, both children had been suffering from typhoid for the last 12 to 15 days. They had developed a complication in which the brain is affected and the patient develops paralysis of limbs.

Another patient, Chetan Gosain of the Tehsil Road area, died at his residence. He was suffering from typhoid fever for the past 15 days and had to undergo a surgical operation of the intestine. The first operation was conducted at Tohana. He was operated upon for the second time at a private nursing home in Hisar but the patient died yesterday while he was recuperating from the surgery. The fourth death yesterday was reported from the Ram Nagar area of Tohana. The local residents say that the typhoid fever has taken the area under its grip for the past nearly 40 days and isolated deaths due to it had occurred earlier also, but these went unreported.

Dr Hardayal Bhatia, a noted paediatrician of the town, told this correspondent that the supply of contaminated water in the area was responsible for the outbreak of typhoid in the area. He said he was receiving 10 to 12 new cases of enteric fever daily. The local General Hospital was also receiving new cases of enteric fever everyday, he said.

The Civil Surgeon, Dr Usha Majithia, was unaware of deaths due to typhoid at Tohana. The District Health Officer, Dr B.S. Beniwal, when contacted, said his department had taken seven samples of drinking water from Tohana last month. Five out of these seven were found to be unfit for human consumption.

He said though this had been brought to the notice of the Public Health authorities, hardly any steps have been taken to improve the quality of drinking water. He said the department was facing a shortage of staff and there was only one Food Inspector looking after three district of Hisar, Fatehabad and Sirsa.

The Civil Surgeon called a meeting of Health Department staff at Tohana yesterday. She constituted five one-man teams to visit the ailing persons and take blood samples for malaria fever.

Dr R.S. Bishnoi, Senior Medical Officer and in charge of the General Hospital, Tohana, revealed that the hospital did not have any arrangements for the testing of typhoid fever and hence they could not take samples for typhoid. He said the strategy of the health authorities was to rule out malaria. As for the enteric fever, he said it could not be controlled unless the contamination of potable water was checked.