Friday, December 1, 2006

Mosquitoes play havoc as authorities sleep

Half the country is engulfed but Govt still reluctant to call it epidemic

The list of casualties is increasing by the day! Initially confined only to Delhi and surrounding areas, dengue cases have now been reported from across the country including states like MP, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Haryana and far-away Kerala. In UP, an increasing number of cities are coming under the attack of these deadly mosquitoes, with hundreds of patients reported in Kanpur and Lucknow alone.
With over a million people across seven states falling prey to Chikanguyna too, there is greater need to eliminate the deadly Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes, responsible for chikangunya and dengue. These are diseases for which no vaccines are currently available and the only way to stop people becoming infected and of the disease spreading is to control the mosquito population. But this mosquito is an elusive foe that rests indoors and bites during the day. It breeds in fresh water and could be found multiplying inside your coolers, buckets, water tanks, jars or discarded containers.
“Dengue is transmitted to humans by Aedes Aegypti mosquito. The infectious disease is manifested by a sudden onset of fever with severe headache, muscle and joint pain,” informed Prof. Abbas Mehdi, Head of KGMU’s Trauma Centre. Prof. Mehdi was coming out of an emergency meeting of the health officials where stress was laid on the immediate need to take preventive measures, including cleanliness drives. “Mostly , only symptomatic treatment is given,” Prof Mehdi said. Since a large number of patients are coming to KGMU, the hospital is currently providing 2 units of platelets to a patient. The hospital presently has some stock of platelets but nobody knows what would happen if the condition worsens.
In spite of the disease acquiring endemic proportions, neither the Health Minister Ambumani Ramadoss nor Delhi State Health Minister Dr. Yoganand Shastri have yet declared it an epidemic. Even so private and government hospitals in Delhi, Lucknow and Kanpur and smaller cities like Agra, Allahabad, Varanasi, Unnao, Bhopal, Jaipur are witnessing innumerable cases with symptoms of mosquito-born diseases. Even Manmohan Singh’s two grandsons Rohan (11) and Madhav (17) have been admitted to AIIMS in Delhi, having about 100 patients of dengue alone, including one-fourth from the campus itself. As a result of this, the hospital has to postpone its medical students’ semester examination.
It is ironical that the biggest number of cases have come from the premises of arguably the most reputed hospital in the country. This speaks how the concerned authorities have been sleeping over the threat, in spite of the fact that dengue spread in Delhi has become an annual feature.
Same is the case everywhere! Where as Vijay Prakash Singh, CMO at Kanpur Nagar and Dr. PSR Aiyyar, Medical Superitendent at Heritage Hospital have confirmed patients to be infected with deadly dengue virus, district officials and Agra Nagar Nigam continue to pass the buck. With no preparations done in advance and almost nothing that cane be done now, especially in UP, due to most of the civil officials going on election duty, all that we can hope for is the weather to change so that these diseases may peter out.
Box
Hi Time Express has known from confirmed sources that the situation is getting out of hand in the state of UP because of the sudden notification of municipal elections. Employees of civil bodies are busy in making preparations for elections and several of them have gone on election duties, due to orders from higher authorities. These orders cannot be ignored and the resultant casualty is the cleanliness drives and other preventive measures that they must be carrying at the moment.

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