The Centre was asked on WEdnesday by the Delhi High Court to submit to it a report on implementation of the government’s long-term action plan to control the outbreak of dangerous diseases like dengue in the city.
A division bench of Chief Justice D Murugesan and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw sought the report within three weeks from the Union Ministry of Health and posted the matter for December 12.
Appearing for the Centre, Additional Solicitor General Rajeev Mehra said, “The officials are doing something on the issue (of implementing the action plan). Let me file a report on it.”
Accepting the ASG’s submissions, the court granted three weeks time to him to file the report.
The court’s direction came during hearing of a petition by advocate Gaurav Kumar Bansal seeking formation of an independent committee to monitor implementation of a long-term action plan, formulated by the Centre earlier, to combat the mosquito menace in the city.
In his plea, Bansal said, “Direct the respondents to constitute an independent committee to effectively monitor the implementation of the long-term action plan issued by the Directorate of National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the Government of India.”
“It is the duty of the respondents to effectively and properly implement the long-term action plan issued by the respondent no 1 (Central government) in a time bound manner so that the dengue menace can come to an end,” the plea said.
Citing data of dengue cases in the Capital for the period 2007-2012, the petitioner said the number of cases have gone up drastically this year as compared to previous years.
The petition also mentioned the widespread media reports on the increasing number of dengue cases and accusing the authorities, including those of the Union health ministry, of failing to act in time to prevent dengue outbreak.
The petition claimed the authorities wake up only after an acute shortage of blood and medicines occurs in hospitals.
The PIL wanted the court to examine the steps taken till now by the Delhi government, the municipal corporations, the New Delhi Municipal Council and the health department.
“There is a lack of coordination among the officials of the Union and the state governments, those of the municipal bodies and it results into non-implementation of the long-term action plan of the Central government,” the PIL added.
Keywords: dengue outbreak, dengue fever, dengue cases, Delhi High Court
I am being a medico and has some knowledge about vector control, I fully appreciate Akbar comments. When the oil rich kingdom, Saudi cannot eliminate mosquitoe menace, it's going to be an Himalayan task for our highly inefficient, corrupted and lethargic Govt.to do it. The solution lies in us.No one should throw the litter in the open space.All our citizens should buy a closed container for disposing the garbage and should buy atleast 2 more for the poor citizens who can't afford. At any cost vegetations should not be allowed to grow in the residence area without proper supervision and biological mosquitoe control measures. Any citizen see a handful of water stagnating in any part of our city, he should drain them, by putting mud over it or by some means.Instead of controlling the breeding sites, if you keep using chemical ways to control, we are going to fail miserably and the mosquitoes will develop resistance to all chemicals as our TB germs developed resistance.
Dear XavierSurendra, Azeem Khan and Akbar. Thanks for ur comments. The
actual thing is that on papers the government made a beautiful scheme
whereas the same takes a u-turn when we talks about the practical and
the only reason is the lack of co-ordination and the sense of
responsibility between the wings of government and the civic agencies.
I know that by way of PIL i cant stop the dengue right now but what i
feels is that my PIL is a futuristic i.e. by way of the same i can
pray before the court to direct the state bodies to implement the
Dengue Plan through an effective way and attitude.
While I lived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I had found there a lot of
mosquitoes and to keep the mosquitoes away people had to use a lot of
spray etc. But when I was transferred to a different city of Dammam I
was surprised that there were practically no mosquitoes. Many years
have passed and I never had to use even a single spray or mosquito
repellent. When I compared the reason why the mosquitoes were present
& missing in these two places, I had noted that one city does not have
any drainage in the open, whereas Jeddah had drainage spill at many
places. But in India the situation is worse hunderds of times
compared to Saudi and it is getting from bad to worse. Our streets are
worse than what they used to be 10 or 20 years ago and there is
drainage & filth in the open almost everywhere. Our leaders have a
responsibility to focus their attention on a clean environment in
order that the citizens do not face an overall health problem. A
healthy society is a wealthy society.
Actual number of Dengue cases in Delhi are far from numbers reported by Govt. I would urge print and ELectronic media to find out cases confirmed by various Pathlabs. I myself know more than 20 confirmed cases of dengue which contribute to 2% of cases confirmed Delhi Govt. / MCD till date, I can only laugh at numbers !! MCD is responsible for the outbreak and deaths as even posh areas of Delhi are full of open drains and litter.
At last we see a ray of hope, without Court's intervention Government's does not seem to work these days. Its a shame on all of us as a nation that we are so unclean that even mosquito's are taking our lives out.
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