Over sixteen employees of Mangdechhu Hydroelectric Project Authority (MHPA) in Tashidingkha, Trongsa are suffering from typhoid. The outbreak was reported on Wednesday.
“It was correlating well with the polluted water in one side and typhoid in other side, so we decided to declare this as an outbreak,” said Dr. T.B Rana, Chief Medical Officer, MHPA.
The employees are those who reside in the project’s housing colony. According to the medical officials the water supplied to the colony was found to be polluted. The water source is located about a kilometre away from the colony. The test found that the surrounding of the source was clean but the water was highly polluted.
“It was found 25CFU per 100ml of water in the tap water which is intermediated to high risk but filtered water was safe. But tap and source was polluted,” said Dr. T.B Rana.
After many people were detected positive for the typhoid, the health officials visited the colony on Friday to study the outbreak. “We can advise people to stop using this water but that is too theoretical, practically there is no other option to provide them with other drinking water, best we could do is improve on the existing source, the engineers have cleaned the tank which is temporary but in temporary there is no water purifying system,” he added.
Meanwhile, a permanent water supply system is being constructed which is expected to address the problem in the future.
