Bhubaneswar: The Public Health Engineering Organisation (Pheo) has come up with a guideline to regularly check the quality of drinking water to eradicate outbreak of water-borne diseases in the city.

The guideline, called the urban water supply protocol, will be applicable not only to Bhubaneswar but other areas of state as well. The testing will be done at various points from the water source to the end consumer regularly.

The testing of water samples on various parameters, which is not available at the existing laboratories in the division level, will take help of state laboratory or institutes such as the NIT, the IIT, the Institute of Mineral and Material Technology or Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology.

The parameters based on which the water samples will be tested are physical, chemical, metal, bacterial, biological, pesticides and toxicity. Respective field officers will collect the samples and bring it to the laboratory for testing. The water testing records will be maintained strictly for further monitoring. The need of drafting such a protocol was felt after the outbreak of various water-borne diseases, especially hepatitis, in various parts of the state. Such outbreaks took alarming proportions between 2014 and 2016 in Sambalpur, Cuttack and Bhubaneswar.

"There was the need of a fixed protocol and we hope with the implementation of the same, we will successfully tackle further untoward situations," said Pheo superintending engineer C.R. Jena.