LUDHIANA: In order to keep the polio disease under control, a special pulse polio round is going to take off in the district from August 5. The district health department has formed teams to cover each and every child between the age group of 0-5 years. In district Ludhiana there are around 3.75 lakh children of this age group but since this is migratory round there are chances of finding more children from slums or shanties. The health teams will visit door to door to give polio drops.
In the urban areas of the district, the polio round will be carried out between August 5 and August 9 while in the rural areas it will start on August 5 and conclude on August 7. For this special drive the health department has formed 1641 teams, 79 mobile teams, 54 transit teams and 1508 teams will visit door to door in slum areas and shanties for giving two drops of polio to the children.
The district immunisation officer Dr Jasbir Singh said, “No doubt polio has been eradicated from our country but even then our neighbouring countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria are still suffering from this disease. Therefore, a migratory round will be kicked off.” He said they will cover each slum area so that not even a single child is deprived of this medicine. The public should support the drive and bring their children for polio drops, he added.
TB mobile van in Koom Kalan for 2 days
The mobile van for testing the suspicious patients suffering from
tuberculosis was in Koom Kalan on Wednesday and it will stay in the area till Thursday. The senior medical officer at community health center Koom Kalan Dr RP Bhatia flagged off the mobile van equipped with cartridge-based nucleic acid amplification test (CB-NAAT) machine to detect tuberculosis (TB) patients. On Wednesday 8 patients were tested out of which two were positive.
The SMO Dr Bhatia said that CB-NAAT is a molecular test, which simultaneously detects
Mycobacterium tuberculosis and rifampicin drug resistance. The automated provides results within two hours. A single test from the CB-NAAT machine costs around Rs 5,000 per test however department will provide free of cost services to the people at doorsteps.
He added that the state government is going to install 7 CB-NAAT machines to diagnose suspected and drug-resistant patients suffering from TB in Ludhiana, Patiala, Jalandhar and Amritsar in addition to one CB-NAAT machine already installed in 22 districts having excessive migrated population to control TB in high risk areas of the state.
He further said it is matter of serious concern that around 2 million of people are suffering from TB in India those can easily infect the high risk groups of old age people, children, diabetic and HIV patients. “As per record of health department as many as 39218 patients were registered in public sectors and 6704 patients were registered in private sectors in state during 2017.”
Highlighting the importance of CB-NAAT machines, the SMO said that it has been medically recorded that in some cases microscopic test failed to diagnose TB in affected patients where CB-NAAT machines being high-tech, are most accurate alternate of early diagnostic mechanism, thus, help in methodical treatment of patients.
Picture for representational purpose only.
