Govt gears up for impending dengue crisis

To prevent the dengue crisis as was witnessed last year, the Delhi government has begun its preparation.

On Monday, an hour-long meeting was called in to review the dengue crisis management in the city at Delhi Secretariat, headed by the Delhi Health minister Satyendar Jain. The meeting was attended by 20 medical officers.

Even as Jain was unavailable to provide any comment because of being busy in the budgetary process, as per the sources, the main objective of the meeting was to fix accountability in the departments and improve the coordination levels in each department so that in the time of crisis each department can work in sync and help in the effective treatment of the patients. Discussion related to curbing the breeding of the Aedes mosquito by introducing effective fumigation programmes and introducing cleanliness drives across the city was also done.

As per the sources, there will now be a series of meetings that would be held on preventive measures of dengue and would be headed by the Health minister himself.

Various mechanisms like the number of beds required for the patients during emergency, initiating proper awareness levels among the citizens and launching of an app on dengue and guidelines for all public and private hospitals will be discussed in the future meetings. There will also be discussions on how to improve the services at Mohalla clinics and polyclinics between August and October when the dengue crisis is at its peak.

Last year the city saw its worst dengue crisis with more than 10,500 cases and 30 deaths registered surpassing the 1996 figures of 10,252 cases. As per the official the main objective will be to not only improve the infrastructure of the public medical institutions but also to coordinate with each department to tackle the disease.