CARAGA, Davao Oriental—One died as a diarrhea outbreak hit the town since Monday and cases continue to surge, raising the alarm among local government and health officials, and other stakeholders who are now working to contain and intervene in the health crisis.
The fatality was identified as Cludualdo Tucasan, a resident of Sitio Lower Manzanas, one of the affected sub-village of barangay Santiago, he died on Tuesday, February 1, at around 2:00 in the afternoon while in hospital confinement in Mati City.
Gerry Dumaan, a Sangunniang Bayan member who chairs the town’s Local Health Board said he will meet the board to “consolidate the peoples’ efforts to decisively address this outbreak” which affects nine sitios of Barangay Santiago here.
Dumaan, who inspected the “makeshift hospital” for some 60 patients revealed that the youngest patient is a three-month-old baby.
“This is the first time that this kind of outbreak happened in Caraga. This is worst than the pandemic,” the legislator stressed, citing an increasing number of patients which only listed 265 on Monday but have reached 350 today.
He also suggested that the town must suspend the vaccination program and instead focus on addressing the diarrhea cases.
According to municipal health officer Dr. Chris Anthony Limen they are “praying hard the outbreak would be contained soon.”
Limen said they have difficulty in accounting for the real number of patients as many of them were hesitant to come out for fear of being swabbed if ever they would be admitted in health facilities.
Believing there could be more outbreak victims, Limen was forced to dispatched health personnel to “go house-to-house for them to check every resident” who might be affected by the outbreak.
Dumaan, who had to send his staff the town of Baganga, 38 kilometers away from here, to buy medicines like, Erce flora, dicyclovrin, metrodinazole, omeprazole, and enatacid, among others, for patients at the makeshift hospital, disclosed they “will do everything to ensure our health workers will be augmented.”
Pharmacies here and the neighboring town of Man-ay, (21 kilometers away) have run out of all the above-mentioned medicines, including bottled distilled and purified water.
Limen had, yesterday, advised the residents of Santiago not to drink water from their faucet and instead drink bottled distilled or purified water.
But Neri Calig-onan, whose wife is among those admitted at the makeshift hospital, said the residents of Santiago, mostly composed of poor families, could not afford to but bottle distilled or purified water, a reason for Limen’s appeal for government to “temporarily subsidize safe potable water” for the residents of the village.
While his wife was confined at the makeshift hospital, Calig-onan also volunteered to ferry patients from Santiago to this facility. “I just accompanied a patient, but as soon as I arrived here, someone from Santiago called me up again—requesting to be rescued,” he said.
Neri also complained about the “dirty” comfort rooms at the makeshift hospital that led Municipal Mayor Alicia Mori and other private individuals to rush at the temporary health facility with cleaning gears and agents.
The town of Caraga only has one medical doctor, three nurses, and a total of around 20 health personnel.
On the other hand, Santiago Barangay Chairperson Marilyn Silveron, said they did not send some of the outbreak victims to any medical center and instead treated them at the Barangay Health Center and closely monitored some who are being treated at home. Some outbreak victims, who could no longer be accommodated at the barangay, the municipal health centers, and the makeshift hospital were confined in health facilities in neighboring towns of Man-ay, Baganga, and the City of Mati.
The diarrhea outbreak has been blamed on a contaminated water source of Barangay Santiago, whose officials had been reportedly advised in November of last year, to constantly sanitize the facility after cases of diarrhea were recorded. Busted pipes and contaminated reservoirs have allegedly caused the contamination.
Yesterday, Dumaan, after a meeting with health officials from the province, relayed that they already have confirmed the outbreak has been caused by cholera, but Limen said only three cases of amoebiasis have been confirmed at his level.
Silveron confirmed a P20-million fund from the provincial government of Davao Oriental intended for the rehabilitation of their water system, but the contractor to whom the project has been awarded told her they would be coming only next week.
Melanie Ybanez, the Municipal Risk Reduction Officer of Caraga, who was among those that manned the makeshift hospital, reported to Provincial Health Officer Dr. Reden Bersaldo that they already have advised Santiago residents to boil water from their faucets for at least 20 minutes before they could drink it.
