Health officials to contain dysentery outbreak in South Cotabato

SOUTH COTABATO, Philippines - Health officials are scrambling to contain a dysentery outbreak in South Cotabato’s Tantangan town.

Physician Renato Ureta, chief of the Tantangan municipal health office, told reporters they have treated 36 villagers in Barangay New Iloilo after complaining of loose bowel movement and painful abdominal spasms early Thursday.

A leading radio outfit in Central Mindanao, the Notre Dame Broadcasting Corporation (NDBC), which has two stations in the provincial capital Koronadal City was the first to report the outbreak Thursday morning.

The NDBC had said in a report the victims are neighbors in a farming district in Barangay New Iloilo, where residents fetch drinking water from a common source.

Ureta said the patients were rushed to different hospitals in Koronadal City.

“We suspect they were afflicted with Cholera, but we still have to wait for laboratory examination of their stool samples before we can do precise conclusions,” Ureta told reporters Thursday afternoon.

He said they are also investigating if the patients could have ingested food contaminated with harmful microbes, since all of them were at a party several hours before they started writhing in pain.