Kolkata: Chief Secretary H K Dwivedi, on Thursday, directed the state health department to observe cleanliness week twice monthly from August, involving all councilors at the ward level. The chief secretary held a meeting with different departments and district magistrates to review the preparedness to combat dengue in the ensuing monsoon season.
He further asked for taking up proper cleanliness drives including collection of discarded materials in urban and peri-urban areas. Central government institutions including railways, port, defence and other industrial units will also be requested for proper cleaning drives in their areas. He also asked for creating awareness at the community-level including, school-based campaigns, from August. The community health workers will ensure dengue testing for every person suffering from fever for more than two days. 1,00,000 long lasting insecticide-treated bed nets will be distributed in high case load areas. All the district magistrates have been requested to hold regular review meetings with all stakeholders to prevent dengue.
It has been further decided that government officials from different departments shall be deployed for the prevention of dengue, especially for the monitoring and supervision in rural areas. 3,369 cases of dengue have been detected till date with 2,440 cases in rural areas and 929 in urban areas with positivity rate being 1.2 per cent. There have been reports of 7 deaths, which is still to be verified.
The Nadia and South 24 Parganas districts have seen the maximum number of dengue cases with 703 and 651 people affected by the vector-borne disease respectively. In this week, 293 cases have been detected in Nadia and 143 in South 24 Parganas. Murshidabad has witnessed 336 cases while Hooghly has been detected with 297 cases.
Pulse mode cleaning activity including, surveillance with the help of drones has been taken up in all municipalities to control mosquito breeding sites. The health department has already taken up house-to-house survey activities in all 129 ULBs from June 12 and this will continue till December 1 on fortnightly basis. Vector control activities have been started in all 129 ULBs from July and it will continue till December on weekly basis. In addition, 624 rapid response teams have been kept ready at the ULB for field-level for urgent mitigation of larvae.
Dengue testing is available at 160 government facilities free-of-cost. Around 9,000 doctors and para-medical staff have been trained on case management of dengue patients. Separate fever clinics, on 24x7 basis, have been started at the hospitals having high case load. All hospitals have been kept ready for any surge in admission of dengue patients.