& çâÌæÚUæð´ ·¤è ¥ôÚU Îð¹Ùæ ÁæÚUè ÚU¹ð´ ¥ÍæüÌ ¥ÂÙð ÜÿØ ÂÚU ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´Ð ãæÚU Ù ×æÙð´, €UØô´ç·¤ ·¤æ× ·¤ÚUÙð âð ¥æÂ·¤ô ©gðàØ ·¤è Âýæç# ãôÌè ãñ ¥õÚU ÁèßÙ ·¤æ ¹æÜèÂÙ ÎêÚU ãôÌæ ãñÐ ÖÜð ãè ÁèßÙ ×ð´ ç·¤ÌÙè Öè ·¤çÆÙæ§ü €UØô´ Ù ¥æ°, çÁ™ææâæ ¥õÚU ©ˆâæã ÕÙæ° ÚU¹ð´Ð ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´, ÜÿØ ã×ðàææ ¥æÂ·Ô¤ Âæâ ãôÌð ãñ´ çÁ‹ãð´ ÂæÙð ·Ô¤ çÜ° ÂýØæâ ¥æÂ ·¤Öè Öè àæéM¤ ·¤ÚU â·¤Ìð ãñ´Ð

Health officials play down diarrhoea scourge

Julfikar Ali Manik
Government health officials and staff working on the field underplay the spectre of outbreak of diarrhoea and other diseases in the flood-affected areas.
A team of government experts revealed this in a report after visiting the flood-affected districts of Mymensingh, Tangail and Kishoreganj in the second week of this month.
"The tendency of the government officials and employees is to 'underreport' the situation and SEE PAGE 11 COL 1 FROM PAGE 1
ignore the negative magnitude...," says the report submitted to the director of Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) on August 17.
The team of IEDCR, headed by its Senior Scientific Officer Dr M Mushtuq Husain during an epidemiological investigation into flood-related diseases, found some offices of the civil surgeons (CS) and upazila health and family planning officers (UHFPO) to have furnished poor statistical data.
"...Statistical data (was) satisfactory in many CS and UHFPO offices. But some of the CS and UHFPO offices displayed poor, outdated and inconsistent data," the report observes.
"Statistical information in the CS and UHFPO offices should be presented and displayed in a professional manner, rather than in an amateurish way. The statistical section of health facilities should be strengthened," the team suggested in a set of eight recommendations.
The other recommendations include motivating health officials and field workers to report correctly on the field situation, making them aware of the implications of underand over-playing the ground realities
and approaching local people's representatives and professionals for consultation about the problem.
IEDCR Director Prof Abul Kalam Azad told The Daily Star on Thursday misreporting is there in some cases, but it is not the case in general.
"Rather, it has been seen that MPs and union parishad chairmen and other public representatives overplay the possibility of a disease outbreak," he said.
Azad added their probe into the flood-hit areas of all the divisions excepting for Khulna division reveals that public representatives show oral saline as relief material, not as drug, and overplay the diarrhoea situation in their areas to get huge quantity of oral saline.
The IEDCR director said they found diarrhoea to have not taken an alarming turn, contrary to what press reports suggested, in the flood-ravaged areas and that there was no possibility of an outbreak of diarrhoea epidemic. Doctors irrationally administer antibiotics to diarrhoea patients out of a sense of insecurity, which needs to be stopped.
He also said they would inform the health ministry of their finds and also send the recommendations for the ministry to act on.