Flood-hit throng health camps

Aparna Banerji

Tribune News Service

Lohian (Jalandhar), August 25

With the water at some villages beginning to recede, villages in Lohian have been exposed to threat of grave diseases as evident from the burgeoning reportage of patients from flood-affected villages. Over 100 patients came to a medical camp at Mehrajwala village on Sunday. Collectively, in Mehrajwala and Sardarwala, over 40 cases of fever have surfaced.

With deeper parts of villages inaccessible by boats or trolleys, only intrepid medical relief teams are making it to inundated areas. Polluted, stinking waters are also making people sick, causing infection and looming threat of dengue/malaria outbreak. Medical teams stressed on need for mobile diagnosis teams in the area.

While Sukhdev Singh from Singhar village in Lohian approached a team at Mehrajwala, demanding medicine for fever, Mota Singh of Sardarwala complained of fever and nausea.

No government medical relief team was seen in the villages during The Tribune’s more than two-hour stay there.

Love from Sardarwala, who had boils and pimples caused by infection all over his face, said, “More than 20 people in the village are down with fever. Many are suffering from skin problems. Standing 15 minutes in water causes itching.”

Dr Harbir Singh from Jalandhar, said, “There are more than 20 cases of diarrhoea and fever. Laboratory and tests are the need of the hour. Right now private medical teams don’t have the wherewithal to diagnose platelet count or conduct dengue, malaria tests. Mobile laboratories are needed.”

At Mehrajwala, Dr Jagdish, member of the Medical Practitioners’ Association Punjab, held a camp outside a gurdwara. “As many as 100 patients have come since morning. We don’t have diagnostic kits.”