Union Health ministry lauds KMC for conducting anti-dengue health drives

A meeting was held in Delhi on Tuesday between Dr AC Dhariwal, director national vector-borne disease control programme and the Mayor in council (health), Atin Ghosh and Dr Debashis Biswas, chief vector control officer of KMC. Other senior officials of the programme were also present at the meeting.

At the meeting, Dr Dhariwal commented that vector-borne diseases could not be controlled because of lack of political will but the role played by Ghosh should be considered to be a model for the politicians in controlling vector-borne diseases throughout the country.

He also assured that from 2017-18, the Centre would keep a data bank of the metropolitan cities separately so that it would be easier to conduct a comparative study. The KMC have submitted reports on the steps it had taken to control the spread of Malaria and Dengue from January 1 to July 25.

The KMC’s three tier planning to combat the disease, like having special health teams in the wards and rapid action teams in the borough and in the central level was also appreciated by the ministry.

The KMC has submitted details of 629 private nursing homes and pathological laboratories to the ministry.

To combat the spread of the disease, the KMC has identified 36 wards where special drives will be conducted against malaria and dengue.

Some of the wards where this drive will be launched are 25, 23, 61, 62, 55, 82, 74, 76, 107, 108, 109 and 104 as in these areas more dengue cases were detected last year.

The KMC has launched massive awareness programme in all the 144 wards where the people have been requested to change their water stored in containers at least once a week. Similarly, water in flower vases should also be changed once every week.

The owners of buildings have been requested to ensure that the overhead tanks and the underground reservoirs have covers. It is also conducting drives at the state-run hospitals and offices. If mosquito larvae are found, then special drives are conducted. The KMC has overall five dengue detection centres.

The civic authorities are requesting people to get their blood tested at its laboratories at free of cost and get free medicines.

Senior officials of the health department said that the doctors follow the WHO norms in prescribing medicines to combat vector-borne diseases.