Valley
Poor sanitation threat to public health
Some hospitals in Kathmandu Valley are already seeing many children and adults with diarrhoeal diseases.Dr Baburam Marasini, director of the Epidemiology and Disease Control Division (EDCD) warned that there is now risk of water-borne diseases, including cholera, breaking out. “We do not have adequate toilets. And people are living in close proximity to the ones that are available. This increases the risk of water-contamination, which could lead to an outbreak,” said Dr Marasini.
Some of the hospitals, including Patan Hospital, are already seeing many children and adults coming in with diarrhoeal diseases.
Dr Marasini said many people have also reported influenza symptoms, and if they are not taken care of, the number of cases could easily blow up to epidemic proportions.
Meanwhile, over 200 people who had died during the Great Quake remain unidentified at Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, and leaving their bodies exposed could also ratchet up the risk of an epidemic outbreak. According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, 227 bodies are still languishing in TUTH.
Doctors at the hospital say that the bodies have slowly begun emanating a foul smell and they have not been able to conduct postmortems effectively. The lobby of the forensic department at TUTH is strewn with dead bodies, and owing to the lack of proper embalming facilities, the smell from the bodies is getting worse, say doctors.
Dr Ram Upreti of the hospital said they are struggling to preserve the dead. “The department has a morgue that cannot handle too many bodies, and most of the space is already occupied. Every day, an increasing number of bodies are brought in,” said Dr Upreti. “This has further increased the risk of a disease outbreak occurring in the hospital too.”