Patients Overwhelm Mumbai Hospitals As Water-Borne Diseases Spread

[hatrack]

Doctors battled Friday to treat sick patients in crowded hospitals in India's financial hub of Mumbai and surrounding areas as the death toll climbed to 76 from water-borne illnesses caused by heavy rains. More than half the deaths were in Mumbai where 10 had people died in hospital since late Thursday, bringing the death toll in the city to 47, municipal commissioner Johny Joseph said.

Hospitals in Mumbai and elsewhere across the western state of Maharashtra were jammed with at least 3,500 so-called "fever cases," health officials said, adding the tally could be much higher as not all cases had been reported. The situation in some hospitals in Mumbai was chaotic with many patients stretching out on floors as beds ran out.

"We're finding more and more cases of people with shooting fevers who are collapsing," said senior state health official P. Doke, said in Mumbai, India's business capital and home to the prolific Bollywood film industry. "Instead of giving antibiotics orally, now we're giving them intravenously."

EDIT

Many patients had waded through water up to neck deep to reach safety or get supplies during the week-long deluge that ended August 2. The rains were the worst-recorded in Maharashtra, India's industrial powerhouse. The illnesses have been incubating since the incessant rains that turned streets into rivers and left piles of garbage and rotting animal carcasses. "The risk factor is higher where people were directly in touch with contaminated water," said R.T. Kendre, chief medical officer of Thane district bordering Mumbai.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/2005/050812112407.o36fbc2x.html

[MiniMandaRuth]

1. I remeber when I did a project on African Diseases

in science class. We had to research what they did to people and where they were, and then we had to write about a made-up disease.

Let's just say, when we were looking for disease on google, the safe search was off.

VERY disturbing.

[Divernan]

2. Mumbai - the city formerly known as Bombay.

nt