As the jaundice situation in Cuttack is worsening alarmingly each passing day, the State Government, more particularly the local administration, appears to be unfazed over it claiming that the situation is under control.
With five more new cases detected on Saturday, the number of jaundice-afflicted persons in the Jobra locality alone mounted to 30. Panic-stricken people elsewhere in the city have started demanding drinking water through tankers refusing to use pipe water.
Identifying that broken pipelines were the cause of jaundice outbreak in the city last year, the Government had claimed that the damaged pipelines in the city, including at Jobra, were replaced at a cost of over `5 crore.
But after a high-level meeting here on the day, Urban Development Minister Pushpendra Singh Deo said pipelines at Jobra would be replaced again this year as the Health Department maintains that contaminated water is the cause of jaundice this year too.
The meeting held at the Collectorate was also attended Health Minister Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak and local BJD MlA Debashis Samantray. But neither the Ministers nor the MlA could suitably explain as to how jaundice broke out at Jobra again if the broken pipelines were replaced last year.
Meanwhile, the district administration has decided to open round-the-clock health camps at Jobra to monitor the situation while the three Government hospitals in the city have been instructed to treat the jaundice patients free of cost. like last year, the city has been divided into 20 zones, and nearly 200 squads are keeping a watch over the situation.
It may be mentioned that around the same time last year, the city recorded over 150 jaundice cases, of which three persons died due to the water-borne disease.