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Thursday March 28, 2024

Naegleria fowlericlaims second life this week

Health officials accuse KWSB of inadequate chlorination of water supply

By M Waqar Bhatti
July 31, 2015
Karachi
Naegleria fowleri or the brain-eating amoeba found in freshwater caused yet another death in the city after health officials attributed the death of a young man to Primary Amoebic Meningoencephalitis (PAM) transmitted by unchlorinated water.
Health officials said 25-year old Ibad-ur-Rehman, a resident of Mauripur, was taken to the Liaquat National Hospital (LNH) with high-grade fever where he was diagnosed to have been infected by the freshwater amoeba Naegleria fowleri.
He passed away on Wednesday and the LNH authorities reported it to the Sindh health department, taking the total death toll this year on account of the brain-eating amoeba in the city to 12.
Dr Zafar Mehdi, the focal person of the Sindh health department’s Naegleria fowleri monitoring committee told The News that the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) had miserably failed to chlorinate the city’s water supply despite repeated reminders and warnings.
“The KWSB is solely to blame for the 12 deaths this year,” he said. “They claim to spend Rs13 million per month for the chlorination of water in Karachi so people get germ and amoeba free water in their homes. But that isn’t happening.”
He said the committee constantly monitored the water supply for the presence of chlorine. According to him, in 95 percent of the cases, chlorine was not even found at pumping stations of the KWSB. He said this showed that criminal negligence was being committed by the water board authorities in providing safe drinking water to Karachiites.
“We have not found the required amount of chlorine which is two parts per million (ppm), in 95 percent of the in 95 percent of the cases when we collect water samples from all across the city,” said Mehdi. “Ideally, 0.5 ppm chlorine must be present in water coming out of the taps of the consumer.”
On one hand, he said, the water board did not chlorinate water while on the other, private companies sold chlorine tablets at exorbitant rates and people of effluent class happily purchased them while others were neither aware nor could afford to spend a lot of money to purify potable water.
“I would advise people to use common bleach or bleaching powder in their underground and overhead tanks to disinfect the water,” he advised.
“Bleach contains chlorine and can be used to kill harmful bacteria, viruses and parasites and make the water safe for household purposes.”
Doctors and health experts said Naegleria fowleri usually entered the brain and attacked the nervous system when infected water was ingested through the nasal cavity while bathing, swimming or making ablution.
They said boiled or self-chlorinated water should be used for making ablution and advised people to make sure that water was not ingested by them, especially children, while bathing and swimming.
On the other hand, the managing director of the KWSB or the body’s spokesman could not be approached for comment despite repeated attempts.
However, a chief engineer rejected the health department’s claims and said chlorine was indeed added to the water supply. He claimed that by the time the water reached the overhead and underground tanks of the consumers, the chemical was evaporated from the supply because it repeatedly came in contact with air.
“People should purchase chlorine tablets from the market and put them in their water tanks frequently cine their storage facilities are improper and the chemical cannot stay in water for long,” said Noor Muhammad Chohan, the chief engineer (engineer and mechanical) at the KWSB.
He also rejected the Naegleria fowleri committee’s report of 12 deaths in Karachi due to the parasitic infection, claiming that the disease had claimed only 7 or 8 lives in the entire province. He said some deaths were reported from the interior of Sindh, not just from Karachi.
To a query, he said KWSB regularly mixed chlorine in water supply at its pumping stations and they had surveyed all the pumping stations in the city for its presence, and found the level of chemicals to be adequate.
“We have prepared a detailed report and results of our survey and we are going to submit it to the authorities on Friday,” he said.