HYDERABAD, May 29: Epidemiologist of the World Health Organization, Dr Faizullah Kakar, has said that a WHO team is analyzing various factors that led to the death of several people following supply of contaminated water.

Speaking to this correspondent in the Civil Hospital on Saturday, he said that the team was collecting data regarding the number of gastroenteritis patients who reported to government hospitals in the current as well as last year, and added that water samples had already been collected in this connection.

Dr Kakar led a team of health officials, including provincial operations officer Dr Ghulam Nabi and Dr Jalil Kamran of the National Institute of Health (Islamabad), and collected samples from different parts of Latifabad and Hyderabad as well as the treatment plant of the Hyderabad Development Authority.

The team also visited government hospitals and talked to patients suffering from various gastrointestinal diseases.

The epidemiologist concluded that given the figure of gastroenteritis patients this year, the number of such patients had increased relatively.

Moreover, large supply of chlorine was needed at the HDA treatment plant for making the water germ-free and the mechanized chlorine-mixing system also needed to be restored, he stressed.

Maintaining that final recommendations to the government would be submitted after analyzing each and every aspect of the outbreak, Mr Kakar said that the data collected would be taken to Islamabad for further proceeding and also to make sure that such situations could be avoided in future.

ONE DIED: A four and a half month old baby boy, Devo, son of Cheetan, died of gastroenteritis in the paediatrics ward of the Civil Hospital here on Saturday.