On April 1, 2024, Dhanajay Roy’s one-year-old son Suboron Roy started having severe stomach pain and passed watery stool at least 20–25 times for 2 days in a row. In the next 15 days, his whole family, including his father, mother, grandmother, and siblings, were affected.
Soon enough, 99 people of all age groups in the villages of Amjhara 10, Amjhara 11 and Majhnipada 11 of the South 24 Parganas were impacted by sudden acute watery diarrhoea outbreak.
Authorities rushed to the scene and identified traces of the bacteria responsible for cholera infection from a community hand pump. The pump was sealed immediately.
People were also advised against buying unauthorised drinking water and using their traditional ponds, as they were deemed to be contaminated as well. For immediate relief, a tanker was deputed to provide water. But this too ended in a month.
The desperate villagers are now returning to their contaminated ponds for bathing and washing utensils, unwittingly putting themselves at risk for the next outbreak.
Apart from the contamination of drinking water and the usual inefficiency from authorities, there are a few interesting questions. How did a hand pump become the source of cholera contamination? Is there a correlation between cholera and heat? And most importantly, why isn't the data on any outbreak from this area shown on the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) database? To get more answers, Down To Earth’s Rohini Krishnamurthy and Midhun Vijayan travelled to West Bengal, a state with a historic connection to cholera.