The BMC remained on "high alert", following the possibility of outbreak of Gastroenteritis and other water-borne diseases.
Health officials are bracing themselves for a possible outbreak of waterborne diseases.
After the sweet sea “miracle”, civic officials are now bracing up for a deluge of diseases.
Health officials of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) remained on “high alert” on Sunday, following the possibility of outbreak of Gastroenteritis and other water-borne diseases, after thousands of people drank the salty-turned-sweet water of the Mahim creek on Saturday. However, no cases were reported in civic hospitals on Sunday.
“We have been keeping an eye on all the civic hospitals since Friday night, but so far nobody has been admitted or reported for any water-borne diseases,” said Nilima Shirsagar, dean of the KEM Hospital.
Sixteen major civic hospitals in the city kept a check on water samples collected from the creek every few hours. Samples collected from the beach on Sunday morning showed considerably lower levels of sweetness — or, to use the scientifically correct terminology, higher levels of salinity. “We took samples in the morning and it ( the salinity level) had almost come back to normal,” said Jayraj Thanekar, chief executive health officer. “But we would still caution people from drinking it,” he added helpfully.
Meanwhile, rationalists and scientists are still shaking their heads over the last two days’ “mass hysteria”, in which thousands of Mumbaikars thronged the Mahim beach following a rumour that the sea’s salty water had, perhaps by a divine intervention, turned sweet. No such thing, the scientists said: Such drops in salinity were a natural phenomena.
But even as the faith vs reason debate raged on, and despite repeated health warnings from hapless BMC officials about the potentially toxicity in the water, the excited crowds drank the water and filled it in their bottles for family and friends. Some overtly religious ones even bathed in the “divine” water.
Civic officials were yet to receive the detailed bacterial report on the water samples. “Salinity in the sea water might have been reduced due to the waters from Mithi river flowing into the mouth of Mahim Bay,” an official said.
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