The number of patients visiting Bagha Jatin State General Hospital and Beliaghata Infectious Diseases (ID) Hospital is on the rise in spite of frantic efforts of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) along with primary health centres to combat the outbreak of diarrhoea. The civic body is, however, still clueless about the source of contamination.

Patients continue to flow for the fourth consecutive day today at the Bagha Jatin State General Hospital with vomiting, stomach ache and loose motion syndromes. Emergency wards already crowded with patients are having a tough time to handle the rush of patients. “The head count of patients down with diarrhoea is increasing alarmingly. About 700 patients have been affected by the disease. “Our doctors and nurses attending on patients are working overtime to salvage the situation.

KMC is rendering all cooperation and there is no dearth of medicine to help the patients out,” affirmed Dr Gaurav Roy, superintendent of Bagha Jatin State General Hospital. Mayor Sovan Chatterjee who is overseeing the arrangements in combating the menace reiterated on Sunday that the testing of samples of water collected from 82 places showed no sign of contamination so far. “If the water is to be blamed then all the members of a family should have got affected. But that is not the case, all members of a family are not being affected. Effort is on from the KMC to fix the leakage, if any. Do not press the panic button because the KMC is working tirelessly to save the situation,” Mr Chatterjee said.

Mr Sujan Chakraborty, MLA of Jadavpur, said: “It is not a time to do politics but it requires effort to arrest the disease, which I believe, the KMC is doing. The members of the affected families are complaining that water is responsible for their bout of loose motion.

“My urge to the civic body is to look into the matter and make necessary arrangements, dispatch water tankers carrying filtered water to the affected wards so that they can avoid being prey to the water vendors who have hiked price of water container taking advantage of the situation.” The director of the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases, Santa Dutta, said: “We are testing samples sent to us from Beliaghata ID Hospital. Though we are trying to test the sample but the problem is that many had already swallowed medicines.”