Stung by the criticism it is facing due to failure to control dengue, the State health department has increased the budget of fogging and directed the officials to work towards source reduction of the disease.
The Director-General (DG) of Health Kusum Narriyal took a review meeting with top officials of the health department on Wednesday.
The department claimed that a strategy was chalked out in the meeting to curb the menace of the disease.
To increase inter and intra departmental coordination on dengue the DG appointed Director Medical Health, Dr Abha Mamgain as nodal officer and directed State Programme officer, Dr Kiran Bisht and Additional Director Health Dr S P Agarwal to ensure proper coordination within the department.
Dr Bisht said that the private hospitals are spreading a scare among the people as they are declaring dengue to the patients on the basis of rapid test only.
The DG directed all CMOs to ask the private hospital to forward the rapid positive cases to the district health department so that the ElISA test can be done for determination of the disease.
Dr Narriyal said that the platelets get reduced in normal viral fever so people should not get scared. The DG was told that the Dehradun district has maximum number of dengue cases in the state.
In the Doon hospital the number of beds in the special ward has been increased from 20 to 35. The department officials have also decided to undertake a massive campaign to create awareness about the disease.
The medical experts however termed the decision of the department too late and too little. “The department is now planning to purchase more equipment and deploy more staff to control dengue which is ridiculous as by now the virus has perpetuated to all parts of the city,’’ One such expert opined.
The dengue outbreak in the state capital has also given an opportunity to the politicians to train their guns on the Harish Rawat government.
On Wednesday, the former state convener of Aam Aadami Party (AAP), Anoop Nautiyal sought resignation of state health minister Surendra Singh Negi on his failure to control the disease.
The district health department too is claiming to change the strategy to fight the disease. The Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Dehradun, Dr Y S Thapliyal that the fogging would now be done inside the houses so that optimum results are obtained.
He said that the department has decided to hire workers on contractual basis to conduct in-house fogging and spray insecticide in affected areas.