Cuttack, Jan. 5: The district administration has initiated precautionary measures to check the possible outbreak of viral hepatitis, or jaundice, in the city after the spate of deaths in Sambalpur.

The casualties took place due to the disease that is triggered by contamination of drinking water owing to leakage in pipelines.

'The municipal corporation, public health engineering department (PHED) and the health department have been brought under the initiative and measures are being taken to inspect the drinking water supply pipelines across the city,' Cuttack collector Nirmal Chandra Mishra told The Telegraph.

The officials concerned are apprehensive because several parts of the city are vulnerable to the disease because they have very old pipelines. There were two jaundice outbreaks last year. While 36 cases were detected in the Chauliaganj area in April, 60 cases were detected at Alamchand Bazaar, Mehndipur, Kaligali and Kazi Bazaar in September.

As part of the precautionary measures, the city has been divided into 10 zones and 20 teams constituting of the PHED, health department and civic body officials and councillors are deployed to check the pipelines.

Official sources said large sections of the present 550km network of drinking water supply pipelines with around 49,000 connections in the city are between two and three decades old.

'As it will not be possible to examine the pipelines running under roads immediately, the focus will be on pipelines running close to drains and domestic connections for leak detection,' Mishra said.

In Cuttack, the pipe water supply capacity of 115 million litres a day reaches less than 60 per cent of the city's population. The remaining drinking water requirement is met by shallow dug wells and tube wells. A large number of the dug wells and tube wells are situated close to drains.

'The preventive measures are being matched by intensive chlorination of piped water and other drinking water sources. Domestic drinking water connections, along with water tanks on rooftops, are also being inspected,' said Cuttack chief district medical officer Prafulla Behera.

'Drinking water sources are also being examined. No pathogens have been detected during the test of water samples in the past week. Health workers will soon start a leaflet campaign to spread awareness among people on ways of having safe drinking water such as boiled water,' said Behera.

Official sources said there is no proper, regular and systematic monitoring of the quality of drinking water.

'The quality tests have been limited to troubleshooting. But the civic body officials are going to have a discussion with the PHED officials on January 15 on maintaining the quality of drinking waterthrough regular sample tests,' Cuttack Municipal Corporation commissioner Gyanaranjan Das said.

'As part of the ongoing operation, the corporation officials have also been asked to take the help of puja committees in different localities for early detection of possible contamination of pipe water supply. They would then report to the PHED official concerned for quick resolution,' Das said.