Rotavirus claims 2 lives and infects 500 in Kiribati

Transcript

Kiribati's Ministry of Health says rotavirus is responsible for the deaths of two children and around 500 cases of diarrhoea and vomiting.

Dr Teatao Tira told Jenny Meyer the outbreak began three weeks ago and eighty per cent of the cases are children under five years old.

TEATAO TIRA: The two deaths that came in, unfortunately they suffered from malnutrition as well. So it's a very bad combination when you combine severe dehydration and malnutrition from this. The rotavirus is not new, it's an ongoing outbreak and it comes especially at times of heavy rains as well at times of droughts without rain. And this month we haven't received any rain so we expect that to happen. What we did from the Ministry of Health now is that we opened all our clinics on the island for 24 hours. Our teams are going out into the villages conducting clinics and detecting new cases and identifying cases that need to be brought to the hospital. We have also made a diarrhoea ward within the hospital space. And we called in all the final year student nurses to come in and assist where the human resource is very highly needed in manning all the 24 hour services that we are providing.

JENNY MEYER: Is there anything you can put your finger on that has sparked off this particular outbreak?

TT: I think we suspect the water as the source, and we are yet to confirm that.

JM: Is there any move towards vaccination to try and prevent this kind of ongoing outbreak every year?

TT: Yes we are thinking of moving toward getting the vaccine. But the vaccine is not cheap, it's very expensive. What we are trying to do is to try and get support from GAVI the global alliance on vaccination initiative.

JM: You pinpointed water as being a problem and the possible contamination of water. Do you think that issues like issues like climate change and overcrowding in urban areas are causing problems for Kiribati in this kind of disease outbreak?

TT: They are not causing it, they are compounding it. If you have overcrowding it facilitates and speeds up the spread among the people through contacts. Climate change, yes, because it affects the quality of our water. And you know we depend on the ground water, and the ground water is easily contaminated from human activities.

JM: So what can you do to try and clean up the water supply?

TT: Oh, you tell me what to do, it's very hard. We can't clean up the water supply. We just boil it. The water is there, we have no choice, that's the only source we have.

JM: And what's your message to parents who might be worried if their child is becoming unwell or sick with this vomiting and diarrhoea, what should they try and do?

TT: Well this is the message that we send, we send out the message to all the communities by megaphone, we use the churches and we use the radio, we send pamphlets around. But the message is like this; when your child is having three loose motions in 24 hours, bring the child to the hospital.

Dr Teatao Tira says he believes the rotavirus outbreak has peaked now, with fewer numbers of new cases in the past week.