In wake of the worst outbreak of dengue in the national capital, the New Delhi Municipal Council has issued notices to Sanskriti School and AIIMS after it found breeding of dengue mosquitoes in their premises.
The action comes at a time when the city is reeling under the worst attack of dengue in last six years which has affected around 6,500 people as hospitals continued to be flooded with patients affected by the mosquito-borne fever in which 37 people have died so far.
The action against Sanskriti School in Chanakyapuri area comes two days after a 16-year-old student of the school had died due to medical complications caused by dengue.
"We inspected the premises and found the larvae of dengue mosquitoes in few vessels kept on the school gate and a notice was issued to the school today," a senior NDMC official said.
The civic body has issued yet another notice to the director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to clear the aedes mosquito breeding spots from its campus at the earliest failing which the NDMC will remove them and impose a fine on the institute.
"Despite being challaned nine times and 17 notices being served by NDMC, the institute has failed to take preventive measures to check breeding of mosquitoes. We had sent a notice to the AIIMS Director two weeks back for violating provisions of the NDMC Act. However, no action has been taken yet by them so another notice has been issued," the official said.
During the season, the NDMC has issued 248 challans so far with dengue scare in the city calling into question the role of civic bodies in containing the deadly disease.
"We have issued a total of 248 challans this season for mosquito breeding inside institutions and households and served 3,600 notices.
"During the inspection, if the premises are tested positive for mosquito breeding, they are issued notices. But if no improvement is found in the hygiene conditions during the next inspection, the defaulters are issued challans," the official said.
Besides 90 notices to the sprawling Presidential Estate, the council has issued challans to four hospitals including AIIMS and Safdarjung, various government offices and a school here for being a dengue mosquito breeding ground.
The Ministries of Finance and Home Affairs, Bihar Bhawan, Sikkim Bhawan and Uttarakhand Bhawan were issued notices by the NDMC for mosquitogenic conditions on their premises.
The council staff had also detected heavy mosquito-breeding conditions in five embassies including that of Ghana, Singapore, Malaysia, Ethiopia and the Czech Republic, but no challans have been issued to them as the civic-body doesn't have an authority to do so.
Dengue, a vector-borne disease, is transmitted by several species of mosquito within the genus Aedes. Symptoms include fever, headache, muscle and joint pains, and a characteristic skin rash that is similar to measles.
Doctors say treatment is symptomatic with no specific cure, so if patients use pain medicines indiscriminately there is a risk of becoming resistant to these.