Cholera hits Daru: 13 dead, 64 in hospital and 260 treated so far

By JEFFREY ELAPA

THIRTEEN people are dead and another 64 people have been admitted to the Daru General Hospital following a suspected cholera outbreak on the island, The National reports.

Hospital acting chief executive officer Dr Amos Lano said last night that a total of 260 people had been treated in the past three weeks.

He said those who died, both at the hospital and at their homes, were children who had suffered from acute watery diarrhoea, abdominal pain and vomiting – all symptoms of cholera.

Lano said some patients claimed they started feeling sick after drinking well water which was being checked to determine whether it was contaminated.

He said that stool specimens had been sent for testing at the public central laboratory in Port Moresby.

Lano said while waiting for the results, they were treating all patients as cholera victims since the outbreak was first reported on the island on Oct 5.

He said all the reported cases were from the settlements on the island and more were being admitted, forcing the hospital to erect tents on the hospital ground to isolate suspected cases and to care and treat them.

Lano, however, said that the island was over-populated with more than 20,000 people, including the public servants, who depended entirely on water piped from the mainland. A few people and institutions, though, depend on well water and rain water.

He said more people were coming to the hospital following an awareness campaign that early treatment would save them from possible death.

Lano raised fears that the disease was likely to spread along coastal villages from Daru, even to the Torres Strait islands of Australia, because of the continuous movement of people from the affected areas along the Fly River.

However, he said health authorities were trying to set up a quarantine service on the island so that the people moving to the mainland were quarantined before leaving for the villages.

Daru on the verge of something good

Canoes in Daru. -Picture by MALUM NALU

Daru is a place that has to be seen to be believed.
Wherever there is a large tidal range, it is usual to find at low tide mud flats, rock pools and a general air of desolation.
True, at Daru, there are mud flats and rock pools.
But desolation is not the word for the waterfront of the capital of Western province.

Every day, outboard motor-powered dinghies and sailing canoes come in from outlying villages.

The passengers are coming to town for a variety of reasons: those from nearby villages may be coming to work – an idyllic way to travel, provided there is a favorable breeze and no rain squalls; others may be bringing their produce to market.
Not that they are likely to do a booming trade – but it gives them a good chance to chinwag with their friends while waiting for a sale.
And then there is the entrepreurial class: fishermen with barramundi catches, prawns, lobsters, sea cucumber, or live dugongs and turtles for cutting up and sale at the water’s edge; farmers with pigs, again for sale on the beach.
Several canoes are anchored semi-permanently on the mudflats, floating homes at high tide.
There are no elaborate cabins on them, just a sail thrown tent fashion over the boom.
More permanent boat homes have sago palm roofs.
No one worries about privacy on the mud flats of Daru.
The town still has that frontier feeling from the colonial days still about, as I found out last week.
It is a place of fishermen, traders, crocodile shooters, conmen, smugglers, and so on.
Australia, specifically the Torres Strait islands, is closer to Daru than Port Moresby and the drug trade proliferates.
Things are pretty slow here and the people seem to be too busy chewing buai, smoking, chatting and drinking away than to cut the tall grass all over town.
That dismal image, however, may change soon with the development of the Daru Port.
Air Niugini is also looking at restoring Dash 8 services to Daru to compete with Airlines PNG.
Indeed, Daru is on the verge of greater things.