Dist health dept intensifies drive to keep dengue at bay

Ludhiana: With monsoon expected to arrive by the end of June, the health department has found larvae of mosquito causing dengue at 66 places in Ludhiana district.
Health officials said they are carrying out extensive checking ahead of monsoon to ensure that dengue doesn’t spread in the district like it did last year.

A health officer involved in the management of such diseases said till now, larvae of mosquito causing dengue have been found at 66 places in the district, of which most cases are from Ludhiana city. The officer said before the recent rainfall, the number of larvae had decreased because of high temperature and heat wave conditions, but after the recent rain, the risk for such larvae has increased.
The officer, however, added that till now, no dengue case has been reported from the district.
“We have already constituted 16 teams for checking larvae with each team having four members — multi purpose healthcare worker, supervisor, sehat sahayak (health assistant), and a member from municipal corporation. As the monsoon is around a month away, we have intensified checking so that we recover such larvae of mosquitoes causing dengue and destroy those with larvaecide,” the officer said.
“Teams have recovered larvae even from posh areas of Ludhiana, including Sarabha Nagar, Civil Lines, BRS Nagar, Model Town, Dugri,” the officer said, adding, “The teams have been checking parks, water tray of refrigerators, coolers, tyres in residential and commercial areas. We have two types of areas in the district — hot spots where there have been repeated outbreaks of dengue and high-risk areas. In Ludhiana there are 25 to 30 hot spots.”
Meanwhile, health experts said the health department should continue checking of hot spots and high-risk areas.
Ludhiana IMA president Dr Bimal Kanish said it is very important to carry out extensive checking in various areas to find the larvae of mosquito causing dengue so that the disease is checked in the rainy season. He said it is also duty of people not to allow water storage in coolers and open containers.
Health experts said an extensive awareness programme about the vector-borne diseases across the district will also help check cases in the coming time.