Acute shortage of staff and absence of vehicles have impeded smooth functioning of the office of district vector- borne diseases Dehradun. Interestingly, the office has got the services of two drivers but has no vehicle allotted to it.
With spurt in the number of dengue cases in the provisional State Capital, this office is under pressure to prevent the menace of the disease in the city and surrounding areas. However, it is handicapped by shortage of staff and resources. Out of 37 sanctioned posts, 24 posts in the office of district vector borne diseases control are lying vacant. The office has no vehicle at its disposal and in absence of any allotted vehicle, the two drivers of the office are driving vehicles of other officers in the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) office of Dehradun.
“We have to look towards others to provide us vehicles when needed. It is surely hampering our work,’’ said an employee. When contacted by The Pioneer, the district vector borne diseases officer, Subhash Joshi accepted that shortage of staff and absence of vehicle creates problems. He, however, added that the CMO Office provides vehicle whenever it is required. “Shortage of staff does hamper our work but we are making optimum utilisation of the available resources,’’ he said.
The office has only one assistant vector borne diseases officer against two posts. Similarly the office has no vector inspector and only one health observer in its ranks. The department has 11 sanctioned posts of health worker but all these posts of lying vacant.
Dengue biting in Dehradun
Four new cases of dengue were reported by district health authorities of Dehradun on Saturday. The district vector borne diseases officer, Subhash Joshi said that 17 cases of dengue so far have been reported in Dehradun out of which 14 are residents of the district while three are from other districts. He informed that last year 314 cases of the disease were reported from district while in the year 2017, 366 patients of the dengue were reported. In the year 2016, the health department reported 1,434 cases of dengue with three deaths. Joshi said that Asha workers and teams of the health department are undertaking a door to door survey in different parts of the district. These workers are informing people about the preventive measures to be taken for checking the spread of the disease. Joshi added that apart from the information campaign, health department teams are undertaking surveys to identify the breeding areas of mosquito and are working on source reduction of the vector of the disease.
MCD claims to be tackling dengue head-on
With sudden spurt in cases of dengue, the officials of Municipal Corporation of Dehradun (MCD) claim that they are fully prepared for tackling the menace of disease in the city. The civic body is assigned the task of fogging in all the 100 wards under it but shortage of staff has hampered the activities of MCD. However, officials claim to have a proper plan for fulfilling the assigned task.
Senior municipal health officer, MCD, Dr RK Singh said, “We had fewer machines so more were ordered a few days ago. These machines have arrived now. We now have 100 fogging machines , one each for every ward. The wards situated in the outer region of the main city are also in our main focus and fogging in these areas is being regularly done.”
Singh said, “Two cases were reported from the Raipur area, after the information reached us, a team of the workers was sent in the area to undertake fogging. The area has totally been covered now. ''Adding further in this he said, “Our focus is to kill the source of dengue for which we have strictly given orders to our sanitation officers to take care of the fogging in their assigned wards. Every sanitation officer is appointing workers in their assigned wards for fogging and maximum area coverage target is given to them every day. Re-fogging in every area is also being done after 15 days.”