KARACHI: City health authorities have prepared plans to ensure that the water supplied to mosques is safe from carrying germs of Naegleria fowleri as it could be terribly hazardous with the fact that rinsing nose is a part of ablutions and these germs attack through nasal cavity, it emerged on Sunday.

“We have asked all the town health officers (THOs) to visit the mosques in their areas, check chlorine level in their water reservoirs and ensure that it is free from algae, which is a carrier of Naegleria,” said a senior official in the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) while speaking to Dawn.

He claimed that the town health officers of all respective towns had got lists of mosques in their areas and were visiting there to check water reservoirs and added that they were also meeting the prayer leaders and mosque managing committees to inform them about dangers associated with Naegleria germs and mosquito-borne dengue.

Similarly, the officials said, the KMC food inspectors and the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board officials had been asked to take regular water samples from the mosque tanks to ensure that the water being supplied there was duly chlorinated.

“The people who take care of matters of mosques have been requested to change water frequently, as this is the most effective way to ensure it is free of algae,” said another official.

Recently, samples collected by the KMC, the KWSB and officials in the Sindh government showed that more than 40 per cent areas of Karachi were being supplied with water with insufficient chlorine or no chlorination at all.

So far 10 people have died after being attacked by the ‘brain-eating amoeba’ in Sindh with nine of them belonging to Karachi and the remaining one was from Hyderabad.

Another patient with suspected Naegleria symptoms has been admitted to a hospital in Nawabshah.

The officials in the provincial health department said that as Naegleria germs attacked human brain through nasal cavity the people had been advised to clean their nose gently.

“People usually clean their noses quite rigorously in ablution, which could give a chance to the germs to attack the brain if water is not properly chlorinated or it is covered with algae, they could avoid it by performing the ritual gently,” said an official.

Similarly, the officials said hundreds of people who had swimming pools in their houses should also take care of proper change of duly chlorinated water.

“Since we cannot go to private properties, the residents are advised to keep a proper check on pools in their houses,” said an official.

A focal group comprising several civic agencies visited 31 commercial swimming pools in the town and warned over a dozen of them, where chlorine level was found unsatisfactory.

A member of the group said that second visit to the errant swimming pools showed that the warning had worked and the owners had properly chlorinated their facilities.

Swimming is one of the main causes behind the primary amoebic meningoencephalitis caused by Naegleria fowleri.

Naegleria fowleri killed three people last year.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2014