North Chennai in grip of acute diarrhoeal disease cases

CHENNAI: After recording a large number of dengue cases during last year’s monsoon, north Chennai is again under the scanner of Greater Chennai Corporation following a number of acute diarrhoeal disease (ADD) cases.
Ahead of the school examination season, the civic body along with the Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board is likely to start a drive to ensure that citizens are given clean water.

In 2019, corporation sources said, around 1,500 cases of ADD were recorded in Tondiarpet and Royapuram zones (Zone IV and V). In January as well, 100-130 cases were reported from the two zones, sources said.
Official data shows that one-third of the unsatisfactory samples of water collected at source in the city were from the Tondiarpet zone alone. Similar was the trend for water samples in which E coli bacteria was found, the sources said. Around 70 samples were found unsatisfactory while 35 had E coli.
This is the bacteria which causes diarrhoea in humans. The disease is caused by contaminated water.
Civic body officials said this was probably due to the large number of roadside stalls and slum clearance board quarters in north Chennai. “Earlier, the corporation distributed food handlers licence where they would check if the hotel staff had contracted amoebiasis. Usually, their nails would be dirty and while giving water to customers, their nails would be dipped in glasses which would then cause diarrhoea.”
Health department officials are mulling collection of ward-specific data on ADD occurrence to pinpoint if only a particular locality is contributing to the higher number of cases. “If that is so, then there might be contamination of water in the pipeline supplying water to the locality. If not, other reasons would have to be analysed,” an official said.