“The breeding of mosquitoes in the swamps and the open drains adjacent to our house is the main reason for the outbreak of many diseases here. It could be dengue or viral fever, but we are suffering a lot,” said an ailing 39-year-old B. Venkateswara Rao, a resident of Vambay Colony.
Residents of Vambay Colony in the city have been suffering from water-borne and vector-borne diseases for over a week owing to the ongoing rains which invite vectors such as mosquitoes and fleas.
Gudipudi Durga, 27, said that according to doctors, her fever could be typhoid. “I feel nausea from time to time and have an abdominal pain that has subsided a little after the medication. Due to the recent floods and the ongoing rains, the quality of water being supplied to us has deteriorated, giving rise to water-borne diseases. I hope the government sets up medical camps to conduct thorough check-ups of the patients in the area,” she said.
Awareness drive
In order to raise awareness among the people about the diseases, The Democratic Youth Federation of India and the Centre of Indian Trade Unions conducted a drive highlighting the ways to prevent the contraction of water-borne and vector-borne diseases which is prevalent during the monsoon.
Both the organisations demanded that the authorities set up medical camps in the areas and provide an ambulance for the area in order to ensure that the patients were taken to the hospital. They also demanded that the open sewers be cleaned in order to prevent the spread of such diseases.
No information: official
However, the health officer at the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation said the information of the spread of such diseases in the area had not come to their notice.
Chief Medical Officer of Health, VMC, Arjun Rao said the Corporation had deployed 28 Mobile Malaria Dengue Clinic (MMDC) teams across the city to conduct surveillance in various areas of the city to identify those suffering from dengue and malaria.
“In the event they come across people with high fever, the teams collect their blood samples and send it to the Department of Microbiology at the Siddhartha Medical College, the only department notified by the government, to conduct the tests for malaria and dengue in Krishna district. If the tests conducted by the department show the presence of dengue or malaria in the person’s blood, only then is the person considered to have the disease,” he said.
Dr. Rao said that private hospitals only conduct basic screening tests and set them as a criteria for the presence of the disease, which could be false and cause fear among the residents unnecessarily. He added that even all the private and government hospitals in the city had to send the blood samples to the Microbiology Department at the medical college in order to ascertain the patients’ condition.
