Drug stores in NCotabato town running out of IV fluid

NORTH COTABATO - Pharmaceutical stores in Alamada town have ran out of intravenous rehydration fluids needed to treat 184 patients afflicted with dysentery.

Physician Joyce Posada, chief of the Alamada Community Hospital, said even watchers of the patients from the affected barangays are now being treated for diarrhea as they have been vomitting excessively.

Jimmy Sta. Cruz, information staff of North Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Talino- Mendoza, said that the Alamada Community Hospital was so full of patients that some have to lie down in makeshift beds in open spaces in its surroundings.

He said that the governor had sent more intravenous fluids and medicines to Alamada through the Integrated Provincial Health Office.

"The governor is doing everything to contain the problem," Sta. Cruz told The Star.

Doctors at the Cotabato Regional Medical Center in Cotabato City, led by physician Dimarin Dimatingkal, also brought medicine as they rushed to Alamada on Tuesday.

Government doctors now attending to sick Alamada residents said there is no confirmation yet if the victims had contracted Cholera based on laboratory findings.

Stool samples collected from the patients have been sent to laboratories in North Cotabato and the cities of Davao and General Santos, for evaluation.

Alamada Vice-Mayor Samuel Alim said eight patients have so far died of dehydration, not 12 as he had earlier announced.

The eight fatalities -- Analiza Landasan, 45, Kusaine Katahum, 50, Ian Dave Tandoy, 8, Betanie Kirat, 5, Marlyn Pangitaan, 4, Pamonte Mohamad, 4, Kindang Demanda, 24, and Ramla Mangirdas – were among the first patients to be rushed to a hospital at the town proper last weekend.

Alim said he got nixed up with the reports from barangay officials that he had erroneously announced there were already 12 fatalities in what seemed to be a Cholera outbreak in four barangays in Alamada.

“There were only eight so far, as of late Tuesday,” Alim said.

The victims first complained of diarrhea, painful abdominal spasms, and nausea.

Mendoza said more IPHO workers have been dispatched to the town on Wednesday.

The Region 12 office of the Department of Health had also dispatched a team of epidemiologists to Alamada to help attend to the victims.

Ruben Cadava, municipal administrator of Alamada, told Catholic station dxMS via mobile phone Tuesday that the outbreak spread through the hinterland Barangays Dado, Lower Dado, Pigcawaran and Mapurok, where villagers fetch drinking waters from mountain springs and streams flowing downstream from upland forested areas.

Gov. Mendoza said IPHO workers are now helping the Alamada local government unit prevent the spread of the outbreak to other barangays.

Mendoza said her office will extend financial assistance to the families of the eight fatalities.