Cuttack, July 18: The municipal corporation has decided to conduct health camps in various localities for early detection of dengue cases.
Such a camp was organised today at Jobra in ward No. 40 for identifying patients suffering from dengue and other water-borne diseases. The move came after a 20-year-old man from Jobra was yesterday diagnosed with dengue and admitted to SCB Medical College and Hospital here.
Earlier, a mobile team was deployed at the Jagatpur Industrial Estate, from where 148 persons had been affected by dengue in the past two months. So far, 180 dengue cases have been reported from Cuttack this year.
The Cuttack Municipal Corporation today also issued show cause notices to five industrial units, including Krishna Coke Pvt Ltd, Rajalaxmi Constructions, Afrin Plastics and Dinanath Enterprises, for not taking adequate measures to maintain sanitation on their premises. Last week, five industries had been slapped with notices for violation of sanitation norms and not taking measures to drain out rainwater from containers and other waste products.
"The detection of dengue caused panic, because in the past two years, it was for the first time that a person had been afflicted with it at Jobra," said local resident Kadir Khan.
Senior civic body officials told The Telegraph that health camps would be organised at vulnerable localities on a priority basis and the process of identification had started. "We have identified 19 localities vulnerable to dengue and further spot verification of the existing sanitation condition by experts of the health wing is on," said municipal commissioner Gyana Das. He said the chief district medical officer had been requested to provide the necessary manpower, including doctors, for running the health camps on a larger scale in the vulnerable pockets.
In another development, the corporation today suspended sweepers of ward Nos. 13, 31 and 34 for dereliction of duty.
The civic body has so far deployed nearly 200 sanitary workers to carry out a sanitation drive, bush-cutting, drain-cleaning and destroying breeding sites of the Aedes Agypti mosquitoes at Jagatpur. "We are regularly monitoring the dengue situation and sanitation and awareness drives have been taken up," said chairman of the corporation's standing committee on public health Ranjan Biswal.
The SCB Medical College and Hospital authorities said 159 patients were being treated at its dengue ward while 10 persons had been admitted to the intensive care unit. "Of the total 2,796 blood samples, 551 have tested positive during tests at the hospital's microbiology department. While 286 samples from Cuttack have tested positive for dengue virus, 88 cases from Keonjhar are found positive," said SCB emergency officer B.N. Moharana.
Moharana said 371 patients from various parts of the state had been admitted to the dengue ward at SCB and 217 patients had been discharged after treatment.
