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| Disease outbreaks stir India's tourism worries | | |
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India is dealing with scores of new cases of mosquito-borne diseases each day, as the death toll from an outbreak of dengue fever passed 100, leading to concern about a possible fallout on the tourism sector.
Authorities have reported at least 103 dengue fever deaths and more than 5,700 cases since late August after monsoon rains began to taper off, leaving stagnant and filthy pools of water in many towns and cities.
As officials struggle to cope with dengue cases that have flooded many state-run hospitals, they are also dealing with an outbreak of chikungunya disease which is spread by the female Aedes aegypti mosquito, that also transmits the dengue virus.
India has reported 1.35 million suspected cases of chikungunya with 1,651 confirmed infections in the past seven weeks but no deaths. Both chikungunya and dengue cause high fever, muscular and joint pain, skin rashes and vomiting.
The fact that the number of new cases of both diseases has not let up is worrying tour operators and officials with the peak tourist season starting next month -- even though no visitors are believed to have died from dengue.
"If this continues, it will definitely affect tourism in the country," Subhash Goyal, president of Indian Association of Tour Operators, told Reuters on Wednesday.
"We need to clean up our act to ensure tourists are not deterred from travelling to India."
Indian tourist arrivals rose over 13 percent in January-September to 3.061 million from 2.70 million in the same period in 2005, following three years of healthy growth.
But officials in Kerala, famous for its backwaters, pristine beaches and hill stations, said they were receiving inquiries from tourists on whether it was safe to come to India this winter, when the foreign tourist season peaks.
"We are getting many inquiries from Europeans planning to travel to Kerala whether it is safe to do so because of reports of chikungunya," E.K. Bharat Bhushan, the principal secretary of Kerala Tourism, said.
"Our answer is yes, it is safe and come on over."
Bhushan added that authorities had drastically stepped up the state's disease monitoring mechanism, garbage disposal and fumigation operations to curb the number of chikungunya cases in Kerala, which were around 60,400 but falling each day.
"All the resort owners have taken extra measures to keep their surroundings clean and devoid of mosquitoes," he said.
Kerala is ranked third in terms of foreign tourist arrivals after the desert state of Rajasthan and the coastal state of Goa.
Indian authorities have been slammed by media for not anticipating the need to clean up stagnant water after the monsoons and allowing mosquitoes to breed leading to the twin outbreaks. The outcry has forced officials to act -- belatedly.
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