Deputy Commissioner A.B. Ibrahim has asked District Malaria Officer S.B. Arun Kumar to submit within 15 days a report on the way cases of malaria can be brought down significantly in the city, which reports nearly 90 per cent of total number of malaria cases in the district.
In a meeting to review preparedness for malaria control here on Thursday, Mr. Ibrahim said they had been dealing with malaria for over two decades and yet there had been very little change. “Are there ways to bring down incidences of malaria? Can we not take up the issue on a mission mode and turn it around to say there is no malaria parasite breeding,” he said.
Activist Suresh Shetty said work had been done in Goa and Mumbai on the disease. “They have significantly brought down the incidence of malaria,” he said. Mr. Ibrahim asked Dr. Kumar to take up a case study of the successful cities and make a presentation. “We can also emulate their working style in eradicating malaria,” he said.
Incidentally, the Institute of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases Epidermology of Berlin’s Charite University has proposed to study prevalence of malaria in the region by looking into factors such as social, genetic and drug resistance. The study will be done in association with the Karnataka Institute of DNA Studies, Dharwad, and the Government Wenlock Hospital.
QBC test figures
Mr. Ibrahim questioned Dr. Kumar for not including in the figures positive cases of malaria detected by Quantitative Buffy Coast (QBC) Test that was done in many hospitals. When the Mangaluru City Corporation was accepting the results, the District Malaria Cell could not refuse to acknowledge it, he said.
Dr. Kumar said they were not including it in the figures as it was against the national guidelines. Mr. Ibrahim directed Dr. Kumar to include the QBC results separately.
