Dysentery-hit Cotabato town runs out of intravenous fluids

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines – Drug stores in Ala-mada town here have run out of intravenous rehydration fluids needed to treat 184 patients afflicted with dysentery in an outbreak that began Saturday.

Physician Joyce Posada, chief of the Alamada Community Hospital, said even relatives looking after the patients are now being treated for diarrhea.

Jimmy Sta. Cruz, information staffer of North Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Talino-Mendoza, said the Alamada Community Hospital is now full of patients that some have to occupy makeshift beds in open spaces.

He said Mendoza has sent more intravenous fluids and medicine to Alamada through the Integrated  Provincial Health Office.

“The governor is doing everything to contain the problem,” Sta. Cruz told The STAR.

Doctors at the Cotabato Regional Medical Center in Cotabato City, led by Dimarin Dimatingkal, went to Alamada Tuesday to help, bringing with them medicine.

Government physicians said there is no confirmation yet if the patients in Alamada have contracted cholera based on laboratory findings.

Stool samples collected from the patients have been sent to laboratories in North Cotabato and Davao and General Santos cities for tests.

Alamada Vice Mayor Samuel Alim said eight patients, not 12, have died of dehydration. The fatalities included at least four children. 

The patients first complained of diarrhea, painful abdominal spasms, and nausea.

Ruben Cadava, Alamada municipal administrator, told Catholic radio station dxMS Tuesday that the outbreak affected the hinterland barangays of Dado, Lower Dado, Pigcawaran and Mapurok, where villagers get drinking water from mountain springs and streams flowing downstream from upland forested areas.