District Health and Family Welfare Officer Ramachandra Bairy said on Tuesday that 530 cases of malaria, 19 cases of dengue, and two cases of chikungunya had been reported in the district from January 1 to June 27.
Mr. Bairy told presspersons here that there had been no death because of either malaria or dengue in the district. The cases of malaria were showing a declining trend in the third week of July.
In June alone, 141 cases of malaria were reported in Udupi city while the cases of malaria reported in other places were as follows: Hiriyadka (21), Hirebettu (13), Manipura (two), Moodabettu, and Malpe (four each), Kemmannu, Halady, Kukkehalli, Hebri, Padubidri, and Kolalgiri one each.
Prevalence of 530 cases of malaria did not mean there was an outbreak, he said. Malaria was rampant in certain pockets of the district. But it was confined to four primary health centres in the district.
A majority of cases of malaria were reported from urban and semi-urban areas. This was because of construction boom in Udupi city. Hence malaria was found mostly among the workers working on construction sites. These workers were from Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, and West Bengal. These workers did not have proper knowledge of health. But malaria was not a public health problem in rural areas. As part of its drive to control malaria, the department had collected blood samples of 5,057 workers on construction sites in June.
Nearly 100 teachers from different parts of the district had participated in the sensitisation programme on malaria. If any teacher noticed that a child was absent in the school because of fever, he/she could inform the nearest Primary Health Centre, which would send a Rapid Response Team to the house of the child to check if he or she had malaria and take action.
