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Several IDPs die from meningitis |
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2009-07-07 | 12.35 PM |
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A specialist doctor at the Vavuniya Hospital has said that several IDPs currently residing at the welfare camp have died due to meningitis.
Specialist doctor at the Vavuniya Hospital, Dr. Maheswaran Umakanthan has told the BBC Tamil service that of the 64 patients admitted to the hospital with meningitis, 34 have died within a period of 3 months. He has said that a majority of them were war displaced from the north living in the IDP camps.
While many patients have been admitted to the hospital with pneumonia and diarrhea, Dr. Umakanthan says that of the 34 patients who died due to meningitis 24 of them were between the ages 14 and 41. The doctor says he was unable to identify the war displaced who had been admitted to the hospital complaining of headaches and feeling faintish, adding that the patients had died due to the delay in identifying them as suffering from meningitis. |
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Dr. Umakanthan said the Vavuniya Hospital did not have facilities to conduct complete tests and lacked specialist doctors to provide the necessary treatment. He added that even blood samples of the patients had to be sent to the Kandy Hospital for testing. However, he observed the Vavuniya Hospital has now received the necessary medication to treat the patients.
The doctor also cautioned that since most of the patients with meningitis were displaced persons from the IDP camps, there is a possibility of the sickness spreading among the thousands of IDPs living in the camps. |
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