Cholera kills 5 in NCotabato

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines - Five villagers perished while 103 others have been hospitalized due to cholera in three adjoining barangays in Alamada, North Cotabato.

Alamada Vice-Mayor Samuel Alim said the five fatalities succumbed between May 10 and 12 due to dehydration.

“They appeared afflicted with cholera because they had excessive bowel movements and eventually kept vomiting until they got dehydrated and died one after another,” Alim told reporters.

Ruben Cadava, municipal administrator of Alamada, said the outbreak spread through the hinterland barangays of Dado, Lower Dado, Pigcawaran and Mapurok, where villagers fetch drinking water from mountain springs and tributaries of rivers flowing downstream from nearby forested areas.

Cadava and Alim both said the first group of villagers that sought medical attention after they started having painful abdominal spasms and nausea were residents of Dado and Upper Dado.

Alim said local health centers are now full of patients from the four affected barangays.

Wilmar Robles, chairperson of Barangay Lower Dado, said 15 villagers under his jurisdiction were among the first to be evacuated to hospitals last Saturday.

Alim said epidemiologists from the Region 12 office of the Department of Health, and North Cotabato's Integrated Provincial Health Office (IPHO) arrived in the town proper last Monday and took samples of the victims' stools for laboratory evaluation.

Some local residents are suspecting that toxic insecticides farmers used in the surrounding hinterlands could have been washed down into their sources of water by heavy rains last week, causing massive poisoning of villagers.

“That is something quite speculative. We’ll just have to leave everything to our health authorities,” Alim said.

Alim said North Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza already ordered the IPHO to attend to the needs of the affected villagers.

Mendoza said IPHO employees, led by physician Eva Rabaya, are now trying to determine what could have caused the cholera now plaguing the affected Alamada barangays.

The IPHO personnel brought with them assorted medicines and intravenous rehydration fluids.

“We are thankful to the provincial government for acting on this problem swiftly,” Alim said.

Mendoza, in an emailed statement, condoled with the families of the villagers that died from what seemed a cholera outbreak and assured to help give them decent burials.

Mendoza urged residents of Alamada to wait for the outcome of the laboratory testing being done now to determine what kind of disease had afflicted the residents.

“Efforts are being initiated now to avert its spread to other barangays,” the governor said.

Mendoza said IPHO workers have also been directed to take samples from the springs and rivers where the sick villagers fetch water for laboratory testing.