Residents of the North West District (NWD) yesterday laid the blame for the recent gastroenteritis outbreak in the area at the feet of miners, who they say have been improperly disposing their human waste and contaminating their water supply.
NWD residents are also rejecting claims by health officials that their poor sanitation practices, including the use of pit latrines, are responsible for the E. coli bacteria ending up in the waterways running through Canal Bank, Sebai and Port Kaituma. Up to last Friday, three children had died exhibiting symptoms of gastroenteritis.
APNU’s Region One parliamentarian Richard Allen told Stabroek News yesterday that he had raised the sanitation practices of miners during a meeting with the Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment Robert Persaud earlier in the day. He said that the minister will be visiting the region on Friday and this is among the issues that are expected to be addressed.
Allen told Stabroek News that the claims that residents are improperly disposing of their own waste makes no sense. He said that if this had been the case, then there would have been other outbreaks between now and 2009, when a similar situation had occurred.
“Mining has to do with what is happening. The Health Ministry is just trying to shift the blame to residents,” he said, while urging a probe of the sanitation practices of miners in the area.
Chief Medical Officer Dr Shamdeo Persaud had confirmed the deaths of the first two children and said that he was unaware of the third. He said samples taken came back “with too numerous to count E. coli so that means then that the water is seriously contaminated.”
Dr Persaud told Stabroek News that the assumption was that there was a lot of filth and that a lot of sewage had seeped into the river. The water in some of the wells, he added, had also been found to be contaminated. Tests at Sebai also showed a high level of contamination, according to him.
He said that the long-term solution to the problem would be to improve sanitation and hygiene practices and the removal of pit latrines and the “other things” which are built too close to the river.
When the outbreak started several weeks ago, the Health Ministry flew in an emergency supply of drugs, which included saline and oral rehydration fluid, into the area. Teams remain in the area monitoring and assessing the situation.
Up to press time, there was no new information from health officials but according to what this newspaper was told persons are still turning up at the Port Kaituma Hospital suffering from vomiting and diarrhoea accompanied by painful cramps, which are symptoms of gastroenteritis.
Allen said miners do not dispose of their waste properly. He opined that the waste might have been improperly disposed of on the land and eventually washed off into the waterway.
There are mining operations in proximity to the river, he noted, while adding that pit latrines, which are the most common means of getting rid of human waste in the area, are not located close to waterways.
“It is the miners who are not disposing of the waste properly; not the residents,” he said, adding that miners are supposed to dig pit latrines but in many instances they do not.
He suggested that the source of the problem might be at a place called Artabaka, where there is a small mining population. He said that over the years residents have been voicing concerns about the contamination of water there. He said the miners were removed from that area early last year but subsequently returned and there are now about four operations.
He opined that the effects of the contamination took a while to be seen because there are not many persons operating in that area.
Allen said water from there flows into the Port Kaituma Pump Creek, then into the Port Kaituma Canal, where a community known as Canal Bank is located. The outbreak first started in this area. Two children from Canal Bank—seven-month-old Steve Adams and a one-year-old whose name this newspaper has been unable to ascertain—have since died. They were both taken to the Port Kaituma Hospital suffering from severe bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea. The canal, according to Allen, branches off at a point and flows through Sebai, where the third victim, two-month-old Zashada Bumbury, lived.
He said residents of these two communities live very close to the waterway and they use the water for all of their needs. “People along Canal Bank have pit latrines but they are not close to the river,” he said.
A Port Kaituma resident, with whom this newspaper spoke with via telephone, also insisted that residents are not to be blamed for the outbreak. The resident said that pit latrines or septic tanks are not located near the river as is being suggested.
In 2009, there was a similar outbreak at Moruca and it claimed several lives.
E. coli (abbreviated form of Escherichia coli) are rod-shaped members of the Coliform group, which is almost exclusively of faecal origin, and their presence gives an effective confirmation of faecal contamination. Research has shown that the Coliform bacterial group is abundant in the faeces of warm-blooded animals and could also be found in aquatic environments, in soil and in vegetation. Coliforms are easily spread and their presence gives an indication that other pathogenic organisms of faecal origin may be present.