Effects of rains on AWD unclear

Brooke Lewis and Mom Kunthear

Phnom Penh Post

FOR months, officials in provinces afflicted with outbreaks of acute watery diarrhoea, or AWD, have pointed to a longer-than-usual dry season – and the resulting lack of clean water – as a factor behind the mounting cases.

The corollary to that argument has been that the illness should begin to abate with the first rains of the wet season, which came to some provinces in May but have not yet hit everywhere.

Few officials are hoping this holds true more than Dr Chhneang Sovutha, the director of the Health Department in Kratie province, the location of at least 10 deaths from AWD or cholera this year as officials have treated roughly 2,000 cases of AWD.

Last year, Chhneang Sovutha said, there were fewer than 1,000 recorded AWD cases.

“Normally, the diarrhoea cases happen more in the dry season, and this year there have been more cases than last year,” Chhneang Sovutha said Monday.

“The biggest outbreaks of diarrhoea were in March and May, when there was a dry season like I have never seen before in Kratie province.”

But as reports of AWD continue to come in – three men were said to have died last Friday in Mondulkiri province, and 24 fell ill over the weekend in Pursat – some experts say the wet season might not necessarily lead to a drop in cases, and one noted that it could even make things worse, albeit temporarily.

Dr Nima Asgari, a public health specialist for the World Health Organisation, said there was insufficient information to determine how AWD cases fluctuate with the seasons.

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