Children to help health dept on dengue control

In an appreciable move, the state health department has decided to take help of the school students in the anti- dengue campaign. The department has prepared a ‘dengue assignment card’ on which the students after a survey of their localities would write about the places with favourable conditions for mosquito breeding. The department would thereafter send its teams to the probable breeding grounds to be indicated by the children and take the required preventive action.

Observers say that taking lessons from the past when it faced flak over acting late to fight dengue, the state health department has swung into action this year much earlier right before any instance of dengue outbreak anywhere.

On Saturday, a meeting of the state- level inter- departmental coordination committee was convened at the state health directorate. Addressing the meeting, the mission director and additional secretary National Health Mission (NHM), Yugal Kishore Pant said that to control the dengue  menace, participation of every person of the society is needed. Instructing the officers to ensure that the conditions conducive for breeding of mosquitoes are not created in areas under their jurisdictional limits, he said that all necessary arrangements should be made in time so that the spread of the disease is effectively controlled this year.  Pant called for effective coordination with district magistrates and SDMs in the districts which are more prone to the vector-borne disease.

Director general (DG) health services, Dr TC Pant said that the department has completed the necessary preparations to deal with the disease in all the sensitive districts of the state. He added that adequate budget for procuring medicines, chemicals and equipments has been provided to the districts.

Dwelling on the dengue-related figures, the state programme officer, Dr Pankaj Singh claimed that instances of dengue in the state have been going down  over the recent years. He said that last year the population-wise figure was only 0.55 percent while in 2016 it was 1.82 percent. Dr Singh also dwelt in details on the measures the department has taken to control the disease. He said that involvement of the students in the anti- dengue campaign would help in increasing awareness among the masses of the people. Dr Singh said that there is unnecessary scare in the people about dengue as they start treatment on the basis of rapid test. However,  dengue is confirmed only by the ELISA test, he added.

The blood bank in-charge and joint director Dr V S Tolia said that adequate arrangements for blood and platelets have been made by the department.

Among others who attended the meeting were director NHM, Dr Anjali Nautiyal and additional directors health Dr S S Negi and Dr Suman Aryan besides  the malaria officers of  the dengue-sensitive districts. 

Notably, dengue is spread by Aedes Aezypti  which is also known as tiger mosquito because  of the stripes found on its body. It strikes during the day time and the experts suggest that the people should wear full -sleeved clothes to prevent mosquito bite.