Devendra Dashrath Bhonsale, a resident of the hutment area at Shiv Tekdi, Jogeshwari (W), was admitted to a private nursing home with complaints of vomiting and loose motions. However, he was reported to be in a severe dehydrated state and died on Tuesday morning of gastroenteritis, sources said.

Around 160 persons from Kasaiwada, Kurla (most of them women and children), were admitted to Bhabha Hospital last week following complaints of vomiting and loose motions, and three of them died due to gastroenteritis, which was the result of water contamination. Many other patients received treatment at private nursing homes like Arpan Nursing Home and Somaiya Hospital.

Samples of stools and vomit of these patients were sent for chemical analysisto Kasturbha Hospital. Surprisingly, seven out of eight samples tested positive for the E-coli form of bacteria, sources said. The presence of this bacteria is generally indicative of presence of faecal matter in drinking water.

A senior BMC official explained that as per World Health Organisation's guidelines, drinking water supply should be 95 per cent free of all forms of coli-form bacteria, and no sample should contain more than three types of coli in 100 ml of water, sources said. Also, no two consecutive samples from the same area should contain any coli-form bacteria, and a serious view should be taken if any form of such bacteria is seen, sources said. So the heavy presence of E-coli bacteria in stool samples collected from Kurla should alert municipal authorities to check water samples in all slum areas of Mumbai, sources said.

An official said in most slum areas, water supply lines and drainage lines run side by side, and there's every possibility that negative pressure could result in drinkingwater getting contaminated. Sources said after giving water connections to slum areas, there's no monitoring of these lines, which are often coming out of drainage chambers, as in the case of Kurla.