Cholera claims three lives in Barkhan

Locals blame lack of health facilities for preventable deaths

QUETTA:

Water-borne diseases continue to haunt the lives of the people in this modern age despite all the tall claims of the government, as on Saturday Cholera outbreak in Balochistan’s Barkhan district claimed three more lives including two children and a woman.

Cholera has affected at least 40 people including women and children, Deputy Commissioner Bakhan Abdullah Khoso told The Express Tribune.

He said that the outbreak occurred in Union Council Vatakri.

“We have dispatched a medical team to the affected area,” Khoso said, adding that a free medical camp was established in the village where 40 affected people from 15 families were provided medical treatment.

On the contrary, local residents said that the government’s response was very slow and inadequate. They said that there was only a basic health unit (BHU) in the union council which lacked even basic health facilities so people had nowhere to go.

“We took the infected children and woman to the BHU where they died due to lack of medicines and qualified staff,” maintained a local elder, adding that they could not even voice their concern for the fear of the district officials.

“They died due to lack of treatment,” he told The Express Tribune.

He said the health department and district administration had taken no effective steps to ensure the timely medical treatment to the affected people in the union council.

There is no water supply scheme in the area and people are forced to use contaminated water which often causes disease.

Most of the people in Barkhan are deprived of clean drinking water and other basic facilities. The provincial government has made repeated claims about the provision of all basic facilities to the people in the far-flung districts, but public hospitals and basic health units paint a totally different picture.

Deputy Commissioner Abdullah Khoso, however, stated that all patients have been discharged and the situation is under control.

People have been shifted to Dera Ghazi Khan hospital in adjacent Punjab due to lack of health facilities in the district where their condition is stated to be stable now as per the official claims.

It may be recalled that at least four people died and hundreds infected in the mountainous Pir Koh village in Dera Bugti in May as per the official claims. Locals claimed that at least 20 lost their lives in the pandemic.

The village was supplied water from dozens of kilometers away from a natural stream whose ponds were never ever cleaned and the water line was also laid down 35 years ago.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 19^th, 2022.