Punjab Health and Family Welfare Department has asked the state unit of Indian Medical Association, and all private practitioners to report it any suspected or confirmed dengue case immediately so that remedial measures could be taken without any delay.
The directions were part of fresh guidelines issued by the Department on Friday to accentuate upon the rising menace of Dengue and Chikungunya and to accelerate the health paraphernalia to check the virus in its early stages.
“The instructions to the IMA, Punjab, and all private hospital as well as private practitioners across the state have been issued on the direction of Health and Family Welfare Minister Brahm Mohindra,” said the state Health and Family Welfare director Rajiv Bhalla.
He said that it has now been made mandatory that all suspected or confirmed cases of dengue should be timely reported to the Health Department so that remedial measures are undertaken for prevention and spread of dengue in the affected area.
Bhalla, giving details about the testing process of the suspected patients at the government hospitals, said that patients tested with RDKs (rapid diagnostic kits) would not be declared as a confirmed case as it is not recommended test. All samples should be sent for ElISA test (free of cost) to District Hospitals for confirmation, he said.
He said that private hospitals can log on to www.punjabnvbdcp.in and submit the case details online and patients should be managed as per Central Government guidelines available on www.punjabnvbdcp.in.
As per the advisory, patients, if not bleeding or not having platelets less than 20,000, may not be administered platelets but it must be checked that unnecessary scare shouldn’t be spread, he said.
He said that Dengue is a notified disease and it is mandatory for every hospital and lab to inform Department about a case of dengue and Chikungunya.
Bhalla said that for any further information, mobile app ‘Dengue Free Punjab’ can be downloaded free of cost from Google playstore.