Fever spreads in Jaffna - typhoid feared

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 January 1998, 23:59 GMT]
An unidentified fever is spreading fast in the Jaffna district. Patients who are afflicted complain of fever which shoots up at night and lasts up to four days. This has brought about a two fold increase in the patients being treated at the OPD in the Jaffna hospital, said sources in Jaffna.

However, due to the lack of facilities to maintain cultures at the hospital laboratory, various drugs are being tried out on patients as the doctors are unable to determine the identity of the fever.

The doctors are working on the general assumption that patients are suffering from typhoid.

These drugs prescribed by the doctors have to be obtained at private pharmacies. The cost of a single vial of Rocephin, a drug being currently prescribed for the fever, is 1000 rupees (approximately 17.00 US $).

Some patients have spent as much as 7000 rupees but are yet to be cured.

Queries are being raised as to whether any attempt has been made by the hospital's administration to obtain from Colombo the necessary apparatus to get blood cultures of the patients, said sources.

Hospital sources say that the cultures would help to identify the disease properly so that patients need not stay long in hospital, unnecessary side effects of antibiotics administered to patients can be minimised and that less antibiotics are wasted.