Dengue infections have increased by three times or more across large parts of the city in the last 30 days, an official in the state health department said.
A report sent to the state health department by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) — Metro has seen the report — shows a sharp rise in dengue cases in both north and south Kolkata.
In borough XII (parts of Kasba, Jadavpur, Mukundapur, Survey Park and areas off EM Bypass to the south of VIP Bazaar), borough X (parts of Jadavpur, Jodhpur Park, Netaji Nagar, parts of Tollygunge and parts of New Alipore) and borough I (Chitpore, Cossipore, Dum Dum Road, Tala, Paikpara and Belgachia) sharp rise in dengue cases have been reported between the third week of September and the third week of October.
In borough I, the number of dengue cases rose from 82 to 326 during this period. In borough X, the numbers rose from 252 to 856 and in borough XII, the numbers rose from 318 to 1128. Borough XIV, which covers Behala, has witnessed a jump from 64 cases to 286 cases during this period.
“Areas like Jadavpur, Kasba and places off EM Bypass still have many vacant plots. Besides, there are many buildings under construction in these places. All these sites are having multiple places where pools of water are remaining stagnant for days and helping in mosquito breeding,” said an official of the KMC.
“Borough I does not have many vacant plots, but it shares a boundary with a North 24-Parganas district, from where a large number of dengue cases have been reported. We don’t know if it is suffering because of that,” said the official.
Tarun Saha, the chairperson of borough I, said that nearly 150 dengue cases were reported in the last two weeks. Sanhita Das, the chairperson of borough XIV, the rise was “worrying”.
She added despite awareness campaigns, people were still littering vacant plots.
A councillor in a part of south Calcutta that is severely hit said that work that took seven days to be done in many other parts of Kolkata was taking a month in the added area — a term used for the wards 101 to 144 that were merged with the Kolkata Municipal Corporation after 1984.
“There is a shortage of personnel. Some of the wards are very large and the number of people engaged in vector-control work is not enough,” said the councillor.
Many residents of these areas have alleged that vector-control workers came to their neighborhoods after gaps of three weeks or more, if at all.
An entomologist said this defeats the purpose of vector-control work as the egg of Aedes aegypti mosquito, which transmits the dengue virus, can turn into an adult mosquito in seven days.
Metro reported on Thursday that the KMC deploys the same number of vector=control workers in all wards of Kolkata, irrespective of their size and population.
Ward 58 (Tangra Road South, Science City, places along the northern flank of a part of Park Circus connector) is spread across 10.81 sq km, whereas ward 23 (PostaJorasanko) is spread across 0.16 sq km. But both wards have about 10 vector-control workers.
Some of the other boroughs from where many cases have been reported are borough VIII (Bhowanipore, Kalighat, Deshapriya Park) with 321 cases and borough IX (Alipore, Chetla, Kidderpore) with 378 cases.
