Health Dept to take help of social media for dengue awareness

Karam Prakash
Tribune News Service
Patiala, April 12

After being badly stung by dengue in the last season, the District Health Department has already decided to take help of social media to create awareness about the disease this time. Health officers – including Civil Surgeon himself – will be soon be making appeals through posts on the social media to create awareness about the vector-borne disease. 

In fact, on Friday, which is observed as dry-day, a mass awareness drive on dengue was initiated by the Health Department. Awareness drive on the Facebook and WhatsApp will improve knowledge of people about the disease. 

It is pertinent to mention that Patiala was worst affected district in the state with 2,334 cases of dengue reported last year. Moreover, the initiative has been taken two months in advance as dengue mosquito starts breeding during this period. 

Sources told The Tribune that the Health Department had faced a lot of flak from all quarters after Patiala was declared worst dengue-affected district in Punjab last year. Civil Surgeon, Dr Manjit Singh, said, “Last time, the number of dengue cases inflated due to lack of community participation. This time, apart from various awareness drives, we are taking help of the social media to reach out to maximum people.” 

“As everyone uses social media, therefore, we thought to use it in order to help residents of Patiala,” Dr Manjit added. 

“Despite destroying over 10, 000 dengue larvae in the district, we couldn’t control outbreak of the vector-borne disease during the last season,” he said. 

It was not possible to check each household in the district without the community participation as dengue larvae could breed anywhere, including a small cup, which contained clean water, he added.