Acknowledging that the occurrence of dengue and other viral fever cases in many parts in Tamil Nadu was yet to show a declining trend, J. Radhakrishnan, Secretary, Health and Family Welfare department, said that the next three months, with the imminent onset of the northeast monsoon, will be indeed be challenging for the government.
In a conversation with The Hindu during his field-level inspection in Madurai Corporation areas on Wednesday, he said the key focus area now was to fully sensitise the public and win over their cooperation in eradicating domestic breeding of mosquitoes.
“The World Health Organisation guidelines also insists on public participation in controlling the breeding of A edes aegypti type of mosquitoes. The Central team that visited us recently has also given the same feedback,” he said.
Stating that theoretical awareness about dengue-causing mosquitoes among the public in Tamil Nadu was good, Dr. Radhakrishnan, however, said the awareness often did not translate into preventing mosquito breeding in their respective buildings.
On the criticism that the government was trying to shift the blame onto public, he said that it was simply not true since a large number of buildings fined for mosquito breeding were government buildings. “We even identified breeding sources in Tamil Nadu Government Multi Super-Specialty Hospital in Omandurar Estate. So it is not about blaming anyone, but each of us ensuring that mosquito breeding did not take place in our own premises,” he said.
On concerns about government hospitals being stretched to their limits with deployment of majority of resources to fever cases and considerably high inpatients, he said that though fatigue might have settled in for doctors and other staff at the moment, they have expressed full cooperation in continuing the momentum for more time as this was a peculiar situation.
He said the government had temporarily given more powers to government hospitals to tackle the situation. This included a sanction of ₹10 lakh to the deans of all Government Medical Colleges to meet unplanned expenditure and powers to senior officials to engage lab technicians and nursing staff in ad hoc manner through outsourcing.
“Procedures and restrictions on procurement of medicines from Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation have also been eased with more powers given to District Collectors,” he said.
Denying under-reporting of dengue cases and deaths, he said the intention of the government was not to hide the figures but to focus on measures to control the occurrence of the disease.
