KARACHI: The Sindh health ministry has sent directives to all the district authorities to keep their contingency plans ready for pre-monsoon rainfalls to protect people from possible dangers of ‘brain-eating’ amoeba, or naegleria fowleri, and mosquito-borne diseases of dengue and chikungunya.

Worried by the increasing incidence of dengue fever cases, and two deaths recently reported by naegleria fowleri, the provincial health ministry has warned the local authorities to expedite their efforts to thwart possible dangers of naegleria, as water supplied to most parts of the city contained less or no chlorine at all.

Officials said widespread rains had been predicted during the coming monsoon, which could provide breeding grounds to lethal amoeba naegleria fowleri and the mosquito-borne dengue and chikungunya diseases.

‘Monsoon rains could provide breeding grounds to lethal amoeba and mosquito’

The provincial government, the officials added, had released special funds to help efficient functioning of a committee formed three years ago to check the dangers of naegleria.

The committee had earlier long gone dormant for want of funds and guidelines from the senior authorities.

The officials in the ministry said still most neighbourhoods of the city were being supplied with water not chlorinated at all.

Recently a schoolgirl died because of naegleriasis caused by the amoeba after performing ablution with water in North Nazimabad, which was insufficiently chlorinated.

Chlorination is the key method to kill the amoeba and keep the life-taking disease at bay. Another way is to use boiled water while cleaning nose as the germ enters through the nasal cavity of its victim and attacks the brain.

Officials have warned there could be a prolonged monsoon, thus, coupled with lack of chlorination, naegleria and dengue could be further lethal this year.

“We have more than 400 dengue victims in Sindh already, and, if proper measures are not taken the number could rise alarmingly,” said an official.

The last official survey of the city’s water supply showed that more than half of the city was supplied with water chlorinated much less than the desired levels. Even the teams found no chlorination at all at more than 90pc of the pumping houses of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) risking the lives of millions in the teeming metropolis.

The officials said a past committee entrusted to keep a check on naegleria incidence was being provided with no funds for the vehicles and fuel required for its mobility to collect water samples from the length and breadth of the metropolis. The work virtually came to a halt because of resource constraints.

The authorities’ claim for investing heavily on public awareness campaign vis-à-vis naegleria has failed to impress anyone as the pamphlets it published might have changed hands in public places but none of them was seen pasted inside hospitals or in ablution places or outside mosques where people could contract the disease during rinsing their noses with unsafe and poorly chlorinated water.

Officials earlier said the germ could potentially approach the victim’s brain through nasal cavity during ablution at home or in mosques where water supplies were not safely chlorinated or boiled.

The lethal amoeba has killed 50 people in the last five years.

The germ survives in warm waters and enters into human brain through nasal cavity and eats up its tissues.

Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2018