Surat: The health department of Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) is on an alert during the Navratri festival which is beginning from Wednesday.
The SMC’s health department convened a meeting of all the 19 garba organizers in the city on Monday and asked them to ensure that they had medical teams at the venues and sufficient stock of masks and gloves. If anyone insists on doing garba despite having cough and cold, he or she should not be allowed without wearing a mask. Dr Ashish Naik, deputy commissioner of Health, SMC, told TOI, “We have instructed garba organizers to be vigilant. They will have to mandatorily deploy medical teams. The medical teams must stop people with cold and cough from doing garba because they could infect others.”
Apart from 19 commercial garba venues, there will be at least 15,000 sheri garbas being done in every nook and corner of the city. Groups of 30 people to thousands could be seen doing garba at sheri garba venues. The civic body has decided to carry out a campaign to make people aware of swine flu and its dangers. Every municipal zone office will send its staff members on campaign vehicles to create awareness on the need to remain healthy to enjoy Navratri festival.
Naik said, “We request people not to take any medicine on their own. They must first inform their family doctors and SMC health department. People must not take tablets like Tamiflu without knowing if they are suffering from swine flu or not.”
Medical practitioners believe swine flu cases are showing signs of decline in the city. However, hospitals are getting an average of two positive cases of swine flu out of 20 suspected patients of the virus. If the atmosphere becomes cooler then many might suffer from cough and cold and their chances of getting infected with the virus will increase. SMC health department officials clarified there was no need for people to mandatorily wear masks while venturing out and that the situation was under control.