Current methods to check adulteration, diagnose

But doctors and scientists at the Indian Council of Medical Research feel otherwise. They have called for setting up of a nationwide food adulteration and toxicological surveillance network. At a recent meeting, they expressed an urgent need to upgrade technologies of packaging, as also of detection of food contaminants for use of public health authorities and industry.

They declared current methods to check adulteration and also methods to diagnose and treat dropsy inadequate. ICMR director-general N.K. Ganguly said there was urgent need to use available advanced technology to detect food contaminants and conduct research to upgrade detection and packaging methods for use by public health authorities and industry.

Prof Ramalingaswamy, a medical scientist, said that dropsy is an avoidable and emerging disease. He said an advanced detection kit based on methods of molecular biology should be developed. He said the existing systems to detect food adulteration were time-consuming and can sometimes yield false results.

Dr Ravi Mallu, MP, called for developing spot-testing methods to check adulteration.

Dr Rajesh Chawla, president of the Delhi Medical Association, said that Delhiites need not fear any more. He said that the people have stopped using the oil, as is clear from the fact that the number of cases have fallen. He said if the testing is done properly then there is no chance of there being another epidemic.

As for the clinical side of the epidemic, data with Dr S.K. Mittal and Dr Vinod Kumar and also investigations by scientists at the Institute of Pathology, Delhi, revealed the need to develop a special antidote against the toxins causing dropsy. They said that new treatment protocols were needed for dropsy victims.

The doctors were of the view that the recent dropsy victims need to be followed up for at least six months for monitoring levels of toxic metabolites in the blood, urine and blood tissues.

The doctors said that in some patients of dropsy, the toxin was not fully excreted by the body even after 96 hours and was retained by vital organs. According to them the toxin was absent in lactating mothers and infants who were being breast-fed.

Prof Ganguly said the medical and scientific community had been caught by surprise when the need for diagnosis and treatment of dropsy arose at the outbreak of the epidemic. He said there was urgent need to devise comprehensive protocol to deal with such situations in future.

According to doctors treating dropsy patients at the height of the epidemic, that began to manifest from August 5, there was no cure for dropsy. They could only go by certain symptoms like swelling in the legs, even in manifestations like sores, stomach pain. All that they could do was to keep the patients on a protein-rich diet and treat them for complications especially those of the kidney and the eyes.

While dropsy will continue to be a medical challenge for researchers, oil traders themselves dismiss the epidemic as being akin to a hooch tragedy. Deaths caused by consumption of illicit liquor does not prompt anybody to ban liquor. Hence to look at all oils with suspicion because of some incidence of disease is unfair, they say.

The epidemic and the cause have placed two new tasks before the government and the medical community 8212; a new incurable disease called dropsy and a new cause viz adulteration by argemone. The question is whether they will find a cure and a way to prevent another epidemic, and how fast.