Health dept prepares district-wise joint action plan to check vector-borne diseases

Kolkata: State Health department has prepared a district-wise joint action plan to check vector-borne diseases and stressed the importance of better surveillance and supervision in the districts.

State Health department has instructed district administrative officials to put in place district-level monitoring teams to conduct better surveillance through mobilisation of designated officers who will carry out a detailed survey and submit the report on a daily basis to the district monitoring committee.

The district-wise joint action plan will help the department to strengthen the surveillance process and help the health workers to carry out a drive against the vector-borne diseases in a better way, believe the senior health officials. Due to incessant rainfall, the number of cases related to vector-borne diseases like Dengue, Malaria, Chikungunya has gone up in the state and if people are not aware of how to check the diseases, then it may go up further. According to World Health Organisation (WHO), changes in agricultural practices due to variation in temperature and rainfall can affect the transmission of vector-borne diseases.

It may be mentioned that various posts like sanitary inspector, supervisor have already been created in the districts.

Teams have also been constituted which will visit houses and record the daily activities and mention their findings before finally submitting them to the supervisors.

The Health department has made it mandatory for the teams visiting houses to fill up five different forms. They will also have to make a list of places where Aedes larva is found and then hand over the list to the vector control team in the district.

The vector control team will examine the list and hand over to the sanitary inspector.

The state-level monitoring committee will chalk out plans on how to check the spread of the diseases after considering the problems of a particular area. The committee will also guide the health workers and formulate resource mobilisation.

The vector control team will also fill up a feedback form and submit it to the district magistrate and the chief medical officers of health in the districts. The chief medical officers in the districts will also prepare a surveillance report on a daily basis and submit it to the state Health department.

According to a senior Health department official, stress has been given on to identify the fever clusters and develop an integrated action plan which will study and monitor individual cases.

The hospitals have been identified in each district where blood samples would be tested. The official also said all the arrangements are there in the hospitals for diagnostic management.

WHO says vector-borne diseases account for more than 17% of all infectious diseases, causing more than 7,00,000 deaths across the globe annually.

Around 3.9 billion people in over 128 countries are at risk of contracting dengue, with 96 million cases estimated per year. Malaria causes more than 4,00,000 deaths every year globally, most of them children under 5 years of age.