Typhoid fever downs 35 in Cotabato town

COTABATO CITY — At least 35 people have been hospitalized due to typhoid fever that hit a remote village in Pikit town, Cotabato.

On Tuesday, Dr. Eva Rabaya, Cotabato provincial health officer, said the 30 patients were all residents of Barangay Manaulanan, many of whom have taken unsafe drinking water since the last week of December.

Residents in the remote village of Manaulanan rely on commercially available mineral drinking water sold in gallons or smaller bottles but the indigent families take drinking water from wells.

“No one was reported to have died among the patients,” Rabaya said in an interview over a local radio station.

Citing a report from the Pikit municipal health office, Rabaya said the outbreak of typhoid fever in the village was traced to the affected people’s contaminated drinking water.

The village is also prone to floods which increases the likelihood of contaminating the residents’ water sources.

Many of the patients are children and the elderly who are now confined in local hospitals.

Rabaya said most of those hospitalized experienced fever, headache, vomiting, and diarrhea.

She said the Integrated Provincial Health Office has sent a team to help the municipal health office in the monitoring and medication of the patients.

The team also brought medicine and water purification tablets to help prevent waterborne diseases.

While Manaulanan is already part of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao after the 2019 plebiscite on the Bangsamoro Organic Law, Rabaya said the Cotabato provincial government is still extending support in terms of health and other basic needs.