The Hindu 04.12.2014
Corporation short of staff to check mosquito control activity
Collector convenes meeting with health officials as dengue fever fear grips city
Even as dengue fever is posing a major challenge to health authorities, the Madurai Corporation is running short of health inspectors to oversee mosquito control activity.
In the absence of health inspectors, the corporation is left to depend only on sanitary workers.
The worst affected areas are the 28 wards added to the corporation three years ago.
Public health sources told The Hindu on Wednesday that the Madurai Corporation had made a request to the Health Department to depute its health inspectors for overseeing fogging and sanitation works in the added areas situated on the peripheries.
“Ever since the new wards came into being, the Health Department has been looking after only maternal and child health, leaving other areas to the corporation. Since we do not have health inspectors, there is no proper monitoring of mosquito control activity,” the officials said.
The corporation has its health staff only for the 72 old wards.
Heeding the corporation’s plea, the Health Department will deploy 15 health inspectors for corporation work and some more are expected to come on transfer from other places soon.
Meanwhile, the city is gripped with fear of dengue fever as health authorities have noted that positive cases increased in November. An emergency meeting was convened by Collector L. Subramanian on Wednesday with officials of public health, school education and corporation.
He, along with Corporation Commissioner C. Kathiravan, took stock of the fever prevalence and the measures to be undertaken for dengue control.
“We have been continuously holding meetings to control vector-borne and water-borne diseases. Instructions are given to local bodiesand all departments. But the field-level reality is that dengue prevention message has not percolated ,” the Collector observed at the meeting.
Mr. Subramanian assigned responsibility to each department while instructing them to work in coordination for effective results.
Schools will receive special priority during the anti-dengue drive.
Deputy Director of Health Services S. Senthilkumar will be the nodal officer and he will brief the Collector daily about fever cases and preventive steps carried out.
In rural areas, block development officers were asked to take up the responsibility of monitoring fever cases.
