Orissa High Court

Cuttack, Aug. 12: Orissa High Court today expressed concern over the increasing incidence of dengue and directed the state government to constitute a high-power monitoring committee to check the disease from spreading further and taking an epidemic form.

The court also directed the state health and family welfare department secretary to submit a status report on steps taken to prevent dengue outbreak by Friday next week.

A team of experts, Kalpana Barua of the National Vector Borne Disease control programme and V.S. Agarwal of the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) today reached Bhubaneswar to assess the situation. The two-member team visited Angul, which had reported 61 cases. The central team had held discussions with the state officials. The fever had already claimed seven lives and one case of dengue was reported today from Jajpur district.

Official reports indicated that dengue cases had been reported from 10 districts — Angul, Dhenkanal, Koraput, Keonjhar, Sundergarh, Sambalpur, Mayurbhanj, Jajpur, Khurda and Cuttack.

So far, 191 persons had been tested positive for dengue in the state and seven persons had died by Thursday. Blood samples of 153 patients were drawn and tested at S.C.B. Medical College Hospital in Cuttack and 71 of them were tested positive. As many as 61 positive cases were from Angul.

Taking note of it, the two-judge bench of Justice B.P. Das and Justice M.M. Das directed the government to constitute a state-level committee to monitor the preventive measures being taken by the district administration, the urban local bodies and the health department officials to control the disease.

While directing the health department not to allow doctors to go on leave in the dengue-prone areas as an emergency measure, the court asked the health department to ensure adequate diagnostic facilities “to ensure that there is no panic among the people”.

The court also directed the health department to make available facilities for treatment of dengue in the three state-run hospitals in Cuttack, Berhampur and Burla.

The amicus curiae, in his petition, had mentioned that there was need for “rapid mobile diagnostic facility to propagate it to avoid panic among the people” as the facility was only available at S.C.B. Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack and M.K.C.G. Medical College and Hospital in Berhampur.

“The situation was alarming as increasing number of dengue cases were being referred to S.C.B. Medical College and Hospital,” the petition stated.