Dysentery outbreak contained
A severe dysentery outbreak that put about 100 Kanchanaburi pupils in hospital over the weekend has been brought under control, the Public Health Ministry said yesterday.
The students were all from the same dormitory of a school in Phanom Thuan district. On Friday, they started to fall sick with severe diarrhoea. Over the weekend, the students were taken to nearby hospitals suffering from what was diagnosed as Shigella dysentery and high fever, Permanent Secretary Dr Pratch Boonyawongwiroj said. About 40 students had already been discharged from the hospitals, Dr Boonnam Chaiwisuth, Kanchanaburi's chief health officer, said. Further laboratory tests are to be conducted to determine the cause of the outbreak, he said. After receiving the first alert of a possible case of mass dysentery, a rapid epidemiology unit was sent to Kanchanaburi to contain it, he said. Initial investigations showed the students might have caught the disease through tainted food or drink, Dr Thawat Suntharachan, the director-general of the Disease Control Department, said.
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