BAVI­TA GOPAULCHAN

As sev­er­al ar­eas across the coun­try bat­tled flood­ing, yes­ter­day health of­fi­cials warned peo­ple against wad­ing through flood­wa­ters.

This, as more lep­tospiro­sis cas­es have been re­port­ed at hos­pi­tals re­cent­ly.

En­docri­nol­o­gist Dr Joel Teelucks­ingh told Guardian Me­dia that he has not­ed a spike in peo­ple seek­ing treat­ment for the bac­te­r­i­al dis­ease.

“With re­spect to lep­tospiro­sis, we have been see­ing pa­tients be­ing ad­mit­ted to the na­tion’s hos­pi­tals. This is an in­fec­tion which is ac­quired, so from wa­ters or soil that has be­come in­fect­ed with dog or rat urine usu­al­ly, but it may al­so be trans­mit­ted by pigs or cat­tle and dis­ease. Bac­te­ria en­ters in­to the skin or mu­cous mem­branes of the hu­man be­ing, and it lives on soil, or in wa­ter for per­haps weeks or months,” Dr Teelucks­ingh said.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh to con­firm the rise in cas­es. Deyals­ingh promised to check with the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ments be­fore com­ment­ing.

How­ev­er, the Min­istry of Health is­sued a state­ment yes­ter­day to ad­vise the pub­lic to pro­tect them­selves against lep­tospiro­sis. It urged peo­ple to wear pro­tec­tive cloth­ing when ven­tur­ing in­to flood­wa­ters as well as in­spect food care­ful­ly and dis­card any open con­tain­ers, even sealed pack­ag­ing such as flour or ce­re­al. The min­istry al­so not­ed that the symp­toms, which are high fever, headaches, chills, mus­cle pains, vom­it­ing, jaun­dice (yel­low skin and eyes), rash and di­ar­rhoea, can be mis­tak­en for oth­er dis­eases. It may take be­tween two days or four weeks be­fore a per­son ex­hibits symp­toms.

Teelucks­ingh added, “There is a mi­nor­i­ty of in­di­vid­u­als in­fect­ed, who po­ten­tial­ly may have life-threat­en­ing com­pli­ca­tions of lep­tospiro­sis, in which there may be liv­er dam­age to the kid­neys and the lin­ing of the brain. And, this will cause menin­gi­tis. The use of an­tibi­otics - be­cause it is a po­ten­tial­ly treat­able in­fec­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly ear­ly stages - you will be mon­i­tored, par­tic­u­lar­ly in terms of blood in­ves­ti­ga­tions, your urine out­put, and if nec­es­sary, you may have to be even sent for dial­y­sis.”

Peo­ple are ad­vised to vis­it the near­est health cen­tre or their doc­tor im­me­di­ate­ly, if they be­lieve they may have lep­tospiro­sis.