The district authorities are now woefully convinced that ‘contaminated’ potable water supplied by the Public Health Department (PHD) is the only cause for the jaundice outbreak in Cuttack city that is threatening to assume serious proportions in the days to come.
“Out of some 109 water samples collected randomly from different locations of the city and sent for laboratory tests, as many as 106 of them turned out to be contaminated with hepatitis A and hepatitis E viruses,” says a local civic body doctor, adding that the potable water supplied through pipelines was infected due to sewage contamination.
Following this revelation, the district administration is now claiming that it is changing the broken pipelines in a war footing manner. But the authorities are facing a herculean task as they are detecting at least five illegal connections for every genuine water connection in every household.
Although the Government has ordered snapping of all the illegal water connections, the local authorities are finding it extremely difficult to implement the order for lack of political will. “Yes, the political pressure at the local level is the stumbling block,” admits a Government official on condition of anonymity.
Till now, at least 150 cases of jaundice have been detected in the city with the maximum cases having been reported from the Tulasipur area on the western limits of the city and its adjoining places. Sources said the jaundice cases may rapidly increase in future as the people in these localities have been using contaminated water for over two months now.