news details |
|
|
| Authorities complacent over spread of dengue | | |
There is confusion worse confounded about the dengue fever having
invaded Jammu and Kashmir. While an earlier report of one patient
tested positive of dengue infection, at Suarankot in Poonch district
was confirmed by the Health and Medical Education authorities, who
have also reported of the condition of the patient having improved and
his being discharged from the hospital, the fresh reports of three
patients with symptoms of dengue fever, admitted in SKISS Srinagar
have created panick among the people at large, with different reports
emanating from different sources. These patients, who had gone to
Delhi and are reported to have returned to Srinagar after catching
infection got admitted in Srinagar, where their blood samples were
taken and sent foe laboratory test. While the media has been over
playing the threat perception about the outbreak of dengue in J&K, the
concerned authorities are lulling us to sleep by insisting that JK
State has so far been free of the disease and no patient has been
tested as positive. The laboratory test of the suspected cases with
some suspected symptoms of dengue, in no way means that the presence
of dengue among the patients is confirmed, the health authorities
assert. The only response of the authorities to the reports of some
visitors from Kashmir to Delhi having brought dengue infection with
them has been that the tourists visiting to the valley have been put
on scanner. But in Jammu where several lakhs of pilgrims come for
Vaishno Devi yatra every week, this precaution to has not been taken.
In the absence of proper enlightenment campaign launched by the
concerned authorities about the actual state of the presence or non
presence of the disease, all sorts of rumours are going the round and
the lay man is depending on the same. While media is creating panicky
reaction, the authorities in the Health and Medical Department are
feeling shy of coming out with day to day development on the front.
Still worse appears the state of preparedness on the part of the
authorities to prevent the spread of disease, which has assumed the
proportion of epidemic in the country's capital and some adjoining
states, in this part of the country. Despite the warning signals
sounded, no preventive measures on war footing have been undertaken. A
concerted campaign to create awareness among the people about the
symptoms of the deadly disease as well as Dos and Do nots to prevent
it spread is a dire necessity at present. The Health and Medical
authorities as well as the Jammu and Srinagar Municipal Corporations
and other local bodies in the towns do not seem on surface to have
awakened to the situation to take effective preventive measures. There
is no official machinery to go from street to street, not to speak of
from door to door, to make people aware of the preventive measures
against the disease. Nor have the authorities taken up any cleanliness
and sanitation drive to quickly remove garbages, which ly dumped on
the lanes for quite long, proving breeding grounds for the mosquitoes,
a special kind of which transmits dengue from the inflected patient to
others. The water logging in the ditches and ponds as well as the
choked drains are not being taken care of. No drive has yet been
launched to spray disinfectants in the lanes and drains to prevent,
well in time, the spread of the deadly disease. The authorities are
perhaps waiting for the disease to inflect few patients, before they
come into action. Then a million dollar question is weather our
hospitals in the cities and primary health centers in the small towns
are well equipped to cope with the situation if, God forbids, the
dengue outbreaks here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
