Do not panic about dengue. The district as such is safe and there is no alarming situation, assure Health Department officials. Speaking to journalists, R. Damodharan, Deputy Director of Health Services, told journalists on Wednesday that as of Wednesday 8 a.m., there were six confirmed cases of dengue in the district, including two imported cases.
Of the remaining four, three are in Coimbatore Corporation areas – Echanari, Edayarpalayam and Thomas Street.
Only case
The only case reported in the district outside the Corporation limits was in Sarkar Samakulam. The six were part of the 246 in-patient fever cases in the district.
Dr. Damodharan said that both the Coimbatore Corporation and district administration had formed rapid response teams headed by the Deputy Commissioner and the Deputy Director.
The two officers will send information related to dengue cases to city health officer, assistant city health officer and zonal sanitary officer concerned.
The latter will pass on the information to assistant director of either panchayat of town panchayat and block medical officers.
The team concerned will visit the place of the infected person to carry out three different types of activities – anti-larval, anti-adult and source reduction. These include spraying larvicides, fogging, destroying water storage containers to prevent breeding.
Fogging
Mr. Damodharan said that in carrying out the fogging exercise, the workers on the ground had been asked to go to closed houses, buildings under construction, wedding halls, schools and colleges and other places that would be otherwise skipped during such exercises.
As part of this exercise, the Department of Health Services was looking at three indices – house index (number of houses with larvae per 100 houses), container index (number of containers with larvae per 100 containers checked) and Breteau index (number of positive containers per 100 houses).
Breeding
The first is to ascertain the extent of breeding area, the second is to assess the intensity of breeding and the third is to monitor the work of the field workers.
If the Breteau index was above 50, the officials concerned were expected to scale up their anti-dengue work. An index value between 10 and 40 indicated that it was high risk but did not pose danger to public health.
The secondary response included checking with the family members and neighbours of affected persons. And also the affected person.
The health teams in the secondary response had been asked to do rapid diagnostic test, if necessary, for further action.
Dr. Damodharan also said that such measures had started showing results in the district and Corporation limits.
