Five new cases of Dengue were reported in the provisional State capital on Monday taking the number of people affected by the disease to 33 this season.
The surfacing of five cases of dengue in a day is an indication that the disease is on rise and could pose serious problems to the residents of the city in coming days. To worsen the scenario, the district health authorities have stopped anti dengue activities from the start of this month. The Asha workers are reluctant to engage in the activities like fever survey and house to house monitoring of breeding ground of mosquitoes as they are yet to receive their pending payment of last year. In fact these foot soldiers of the health department are staging a protest near the parade ground from last few days demanding immediate release of their pending payments. It is learnt that the department owes as sum of Rs 6 lakhs to the Asha workers.
The District in-charge of Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP), Dr Puneet Chandra said 33 cases have been so far been reported positive for the dengue this year, out of which 21 are from Haridwar district, ten from Dehradun while two are residents of neighbouring districts of Uttar Pradesh.
The department has collected samples of 2,061 patients this year out of which 33 patients have been found positive in Enzyme linked Immunosorbent Assay (ElISA) which is the confirmatory test of the disease.
The health department had reported as many as 1,434 cases of Dengue last year after collecting samples of 41,325 suspected patients. large numbers of patients were reported from lakhibagh area of the city. Incidentally the number of dengue cases witnessed a sharp increase last year from 829 cases reported in the year 2015.
Dengue is spread by Aedes Aezypti or tiger mosquito. It has characteristic stripes on its body due which it is called tiger mosquito. It strikes during day time and experts suggest that people should wear full sleeved clothes to prevent mosquito bite.