About 800 people with gastroenteritis have been admitted to different hospitals of the Kasur City, including the DHQ hospital, where at least 250 patients had been treated during the last three days. The doctors told Business Recorder that a large number of patients were children between the ages of one to seven years.
They said humid weather, which was favourable for mushroom growth of the virus, was the cause of spread of gastroenteritis. They believed that the use of contaminated water being supplied by the Tehsil municipal administration was the main reason of the spread of the disease.
They said despite complaints by the people, the district government has not replaced the rusty and broken pipelines as a result of which dirty water mixed up with potable water. Furthermore, the business of spurious beverages and unhygienic edibles was going on unchecked throughout the city, which according to child specialist Dr Ali Abu Zar of Children Hospital Lahore and Dr Hafiz Qamar Irshad of the DHQ Hospital was responsible for the spread of the disease.
Meanwhile, when visited the DHQ hospital Kasur, it presented a pathetic picture. The emergency and children wards were crowded. Air conditioners, room coolers and exhaust fans were non-functional. The smell oozing from children ward was making it difficult to stand there for a long time.
A nurse, requesting anonymity, said one of her colleagues fainted the other day due to humid condition in the emergency ward. Zohran Bibi who has been attending her son suffering from gastroenteritis for the last three days, said she had to go back to her village, leaving the child alone in the hospital ward, to manage money for medicine, including drips and syringes which the hospital refused to give her. Another patient said there was rush of patients in the day.
They moved to their houses in the night and came back early in the morning before the doctor's visit. Moreover, most of the doctors were busy to attend the sales promotion officers (medical raps) belonging to different pharmaceutical companies and spent a lot of time with them and the patients were standing outside the rooms of the doctors.
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