Cholera kills 5, downs 103 in N. Cotabato town

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines – Five villagers have died while 103 others have been hospitalized due to cholera in three adjoining barangays in Alamada town this province.

Alamada Vice Mayor Samuel Alim said the five villagers died between May 10 and 12 due to dehydration.

“They appeared afflicted with cholera because they had excessive bowel movement and eventually kept vomiting until they got dehydrated and died one after another,” Alim told journalists in the Cebuano dialect.

Ruben Cadava, municipal administrator of Alamada, said the cholera cases were reported in the hinterland barangays of Dado, Lower Dado, Pigcawaran and Mapurok, where villagers fetch drinking water from mountain springs and tributaries of rivers from nearby forested areas.

Cadava and Alim said the first group of villagers who sought medical attention after experiencing painful abdominal spasms and nausea were residents of Dado and Lower Dado.

Alim said local clinics are now full of patients from the  affected barangays.

Alim said epidemiologists from the Department of Health-Region 12 and the Integrated Provincial Health Office (IPHO) took stool samples of the patients for laboratory tests on Monday.

Some residents suspect that insecticides that farmers used in the surrounding hinterlands could have been washed down into their sources of water by heavy rains last week, making the villagers sick.

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

Alim said North Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza has ordered the IPHO to attend to the needs of the affected villagers. – With Edith Regalado