UT Health Dept set to go digital

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 18

The UT Health Department is all set to go digital. It will soon launch a mobile application to help the city residents in eliminating the larvae of dengue and chikungunya.

By using the mobile app, residents could upload the picture of the breeding ground of dengue larvae. The app has been developed in the wake of the monsoon to prevent the outbreak of mosquito-borne diseases.

Dr Rakesh Kashyap, Director Health Services, Chandigarh, said the app uses GPS technology through Internet to track the movement of the Health Department team and avail the information about the breeding of dengue and chikungunya mosquitoes in real time.

“Residents will have to upload the picture and location of the mosquito breeding ground. Soon, our team will leave for the place and destroy the larvae,” said Dr Kashyap.

Besides, the health team will conduct house-to-house visits to check if mosquito continues to breed in fresh and stagnant water in any part of the household and destroy the larvae when found. The Health Department team will also report the higher authorities about the vulnerability status of every household for further action.

Dengue and chikungunya are caused due to the bite of infected female aedes aegypti mosquito. These mosquitoes breed in clean and stagnant water that is normally available in overhead tanks, underground tanks, air coolers, bird pot, money plant, flower pots, bamboo grass, tray, buckets and any solid waste having clean water in the households. Further, rainwater remaining stagnant intensifies the threat of an outbreak in the monsoon season.

“By developing this app, our intention is to reach out to the people of the city in order to collect latest updates so that they could help us in destroying the larvae,” said Dr Kashyap.

According to department sources, the app will be initially available on the Google Play Store.

Dr Rakesh Kashyap, Director Health Services, Chandigarh, said the motive behind creating the app was to detect the larvae and destroy it as early as possible. The aedes aegypti mosquito spreads its breeding area to nearly 200 metres. It takes hardly eight to 10 days for egglings to grow to adult mosquitoes. The idea behind launching the app was to destroy the larvae in the remaining timeframe.

Health Dept conducts inspection

The Health Department today conducted the survey of 2,500 houses across the city. Besides, the team inspected the vulnerable areas in PGI to destroy the possible breeding points of dengue larvae .