Four holidays in the first six days of this month have affected the anti dengue drive in the city as the medical health department slowed down its activities considerably during this period. The department which is facing much criticism for its lackadaisical approach towards the dengue menace went into a sleeping mode due to the successive holidays of Gandhi Jayanti, Dussehra, Eid and Sunday. In its anti dengue drive the department was organizing regular camps in the affected areas but in last four days no such camp was organized.
On Saturday, however, four new cases of dengue were reported in the city taking the total number of cases to 77 this season. It is pertinent to mention here that the health department reduced the number of dengue affected people last month after it revised the list of patients and considered only those cases which were found positive in Enzyme linked Immuno Sorbent Assay (ElISA) test done in the government centres. After affecting large number of people in Bhagat Singh colony and Sanjay nagar the Dengue virus seems to have spread in the Mehuwala area of city.
The district Nodal officer for Dengue, Dr DK Chakrapani told The Pioneer that out of the four new cases reported on Saturday two are from Delhi. He claimed that intensive anti dengue drive undertaken by the department this year had its effect due to which the dengue patients this year are much less than last year. Dr Chakrapani said that the department divided the city in four areas and undertook massive fogging and door to door surveys in the affected areas. He accepted that due to holidays camps are not being organised in last 3-4 days but claimed that department is fully geared up to meet the challenge of dengue.
Dengue is a viral infection spread by the mosquito Aedes Aezypti popularly known as Tiger Mosquito due to the characteristic strips over its body. The symptoms of the disease are persistent high fever, rashes, headache and pain in the joints. In the acute cases the platelets number decrease drastically which may prove fatal for the patient.