INDORE: The health administration in Indore on Sunday declared the waterborne disease outbreak in Bhagirathpura locality an epidemic, calling in specialised teams from the Central and state govts to contain the spread and identify the root cause of contamination that has claimed 10 lives so far in the area. CMHO Dr Madhav Hasani said, “An epidemic is defined by reporting more cases of a disease than usual for a specific area. We are now treating the outbreak on that scale. These national teams are analysing our survey data to determine if the contamination originated from a single source or multiple points.”

A high-level meeting was chaired by collector Shivam Verma at the Smart City office on Sunday morning to coordinate with specialists from across India, who include ICMR-NIRBI (Kolkata) scientists Dr Pramit Ghosh and Dr Gautam Chaudhary from the National Institute for Research in Bacterial Infections, Dr Anubhav from the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), along with experts in community medicine and epidemiology from the State Surveillance Team (Bhopal).