G’chiroli now gears up to fight Covid, communicable diseases

Nagpur: Flood-hit Gadchiroli is crawling back to normalcy, with rains giving a respite to the remote Maoist-affected tribal district of eastern Vidarbha after a 72-hour downpour. The district is now left with only two roads closed, between Rompalli-Zinganoor due to Koretogu nullah, and Asarali-Somanpalli as the water in Somanpalli nullah is yet to recede.
The district administration under collector Dipak Singla is now gearing up to salvage the situation, with focus on Covid management. The pandemic is projected to peak in September, and the administration also needs to check the spread of other communicable diseases.
After a review meeting by state disaster management, relief and rehabilitation minister Vijay Wadettiwar this week, Singla has sent a proposal for budgetary sanction of Rs5 crore along with a 300-bedded Dedicated Covid Hospital (DCH) at each of the four affected blocks of Kurkheda, Bhamragarh, Sironcha and Etapalli.
“We are aiming to develop four DCH in the affected blocks so that the local population can be treated at their talukas and is not required to travel to Gadchiroli, where such facilities already exist. Given the size of the district and other impediments, we might need DCHs at the talukas now, with the pandemic peak in September in mind,” said Singla.
Singla also said there would be sanitization and cleaning drives in Bhamragarh taluka, where 85 villages were cut off in the flood after the overflowing Parlakota river submerged the bridge connecting the taluka to the rest of the district. “We are preparing the ‘three-year-vision’ plan now following suggestions of district guardian minister Eknath Shinde. This would revolve around infrastructure building, including crucial projects in and around Bhamragarh and Etapalli to stop such repeated flooding,” he said.
Singla also sounded hopeful of starting RT-PCR testing in the district within a month.
Civil surgeon Dr Anilkumar Rudy said two posts of microbiologists and another two of pathologists along with some technicians would be recruited soon and trained at AIIMS. “Gadchiroli is ranked 36th in the state in the positivity rate at 2.5% with only one death so far, which too had taken place at Hyderabad. We are now gearing up to meet the peak in September with the focus on checking the spread into community at the earliest,” he said.