kolkata: As a part of its precautionary measure and effective management of scrub typhus cases, the state health department has already made around 44 laboratories functional to perform confirmatory tests for scrub typhus.
As many as 15 scrub typhus cases have been reported across the state in the past four weeks. Most of the infected patients were children.
Only three children had required treatment in the PICU, sources said. The majority of the infected cases were from the rural areas.
A senior official of the health department said that some cases of scrub typhus are reported almost every year. Around 10-15 per cent of the total infected cases are normally from the city. These cases are reported during monsoon.
Following the recent surge in scrub typhus cases, the School of Tropical Medicine, the BC Roy Children Hospital and all the five medical colleges in Kolkata have already started carrying out scrub typhus tests.
The hospitals in the city are a part of the 44 testing labs where the testing facility has been introduced.
The health department has already allotted a fund of around Rs 30 lakh for procuring IGM Elisa kits which have been sent to various medical colleges, district and sub-divisional hospitals in the state.
The health department has been keeping a tab on the situation. The districts where the maximum number of scrub typhus cases had been reported earlier are Murshidabad, Bankura, Birbhum, Hooghly and East Midnapore.
The disease is spread among people through the bites of infected chiggers (larval mites). Scrub typhus, also known as bush typhus, is a disease caused by bacteria called Orientia tsutsugamushi and it commonly occurs in rural areas.