After rain, Health Dept gears up to tackle mosquito-borne diseases

Tribune News Service
Tarn Taran, August 21

After the recent showers in the region, the district Health Department has increased vigil to keep a check on mosquito borne diseases such as dengue and malaria.

The district so far has been doing better than many other parts of the state as only two positive cases of dengue have been reported. The District Epidemiologist, Dr Madan Mohan, said: “One of the patients had undergone treatment at Chandigarh and had also been living there. But as per norms, the patient is counted from a district where his parent address is.” He said that practically, the district had reported only one patient.

The official said they had again started visiting the areas where waterlogging was reported and had started fumigation and apprising residents. “The mosquito-borne diseases are easily preventable. With increased level of awareness in city, we feel that the spread of the diseases will remain under control,” he said.

In the past years, a maximum of the 80 per cent of patients happened to be from the walled city area, which is densely populated. “In densely populated areas, the chances of an infected mosquito bite are more and it explains the high patient count form there. But this year, our focus is also on inner city areas,” he said.

Dr Madan said if people continued devoting one day per week to changing water in pots, air coolers, cleaning fridges and removing junk from the open, the patient count would remain low.

Civil Hospital initiates rotavirus immunisation

The Tarn Taran Civil Hospital initiated rotavirus immunisation campaign against diarrhoea on Wednesday. The drive was kicked off by Civil Surgeon Dr Anoop Kumar and District Immunisation Officer Dr Suman.

Dr Kumar said the immunisation would protect children against diarrhoea which is a major cause of infant mortality worldwide. The department would administer immunisation drops to all children under the age of five years, he said.

The civil surgeon said people confuse rotavirus immunisation with polio immunisation as both are administered orally. “While for polio, only two drops are given to a child, in the case of rotavirus, five drops are administered,” he said adding that people should come forward to get their children immunised.

The District Immunisation Officer said according to a study conducted, a total of 78,000 children in the country had died of diarrhoea during 2013-14.