Loon hospital overcrowded as diarrhea patients swell

Patients and hospital staffs at the Loon District Hospital in Loon, Bohol will have to bear with overcrowding as the number of residents affected by diarrhea continues to rise.

As of yesterday, the number of diarrhea patients confined at the hospital rose to a hundred from the 63 patients admitted since late last week.

Since the hospital has only a 25-bed capacity, patients have been advised to bring with them their own beds in order to fit in and avail of medical services.

Loon District Hospital chief Celestina dela Cerna said that they have to send other patients to nearby hospitals because they already have a hard time accommodating and or facilitating medical care with the bulk of patients coming each day.

Dela Cerna also said that so far the Loon municipal government has augmented the size of hospital staff to attend to patients.

She added that they have been receiving help also from other sectors on needles, fluids and medicine.

Aside from the surveillance team, regional director Dr. Susana Madarietta said that the Department of Health-7 would also be sending an environmental sanitation team that will check each household in the area and will conduct a man-to-man public health education on sanitation and water management.

Madarietta said that the environmental sanitation team would be working on educating people on proper handwashing and boiling of water including chlorination.

So far, the DOH is still waiting for the results of the water and stool samples that they collected from those affected. Currently, the municipality of Loon increases the chlorination treatment of the Loon water system to address the problem initially traced to water contamination.

Loon Mayor Cesar Tomas Lopez said they carried out the water treatment this week while waiting for conclusive findings from the DOH, which is investigating the cause of the epidemic.

"Scientifically, there is no conclusive findings yet. Initially, the stool exam revealed that it was amoeba and most likely the water system was contaminated. The clues are suggestive that the water was contaminated, but as to the cause, we are still waiting for the official report from the health department," he said.

Loon has two water sources, both springs, located in barangays Agsoso and Antaig.

The town, which has been operating the water system since the early 1990s, has four water reservoirs and five pumping stations that serve at least 4,000 consumers.

Lopez said the heavy downpour the past weeks could have contributed to the contamination. He suspected that "human and animal wastes carried by the flood had seeped into water sources."

However, no leaking water pipes were found during inspection.

The municipal officials of Loon already declared the town under a state of calamity last Monday.

Meanwhile, the DOH is expected to release today the result of its examination on the water used by the residents. - Jasmin R. Uy