Rajahmundry: The Rajahmundry Municipal Corporation (RMC) has begun a campaign against `chikun gunya' in all the 44 wards in the city. It has distributed some 1 lakh pamphlets and also took up a campaign through announcements in all the wards.

According to Commissioner C.Sudarshan Reddy, some cases of `Chikun gunya' were reported from a few slums in the city and RMC medical teams immediately sent to those places.

Disease spreads

RMC medical officer Rajendra Prasad said that they had collected blood samples of those patients who were suffering from fever for more than two weeks. He said that they were distributing medicines in slum areas for the disease.

The Commissioner sought some preventive steps to keep away the disease like changing the water in flower vases, air coolers and money-plant bottles for every three days. He also sought better sanitation.

Medical teams headed by East Godavari additional district and medical officer Jagadeeswara Rao and district Malaria Officer Mallikarjuna Rao visited some of the villages in Rajahmundry rural mandal to gauge the seriousness of the outbreak of viral fevers. The viral fevers had spread in some 50 villages in Peddapuram, Samalkot, Seethanagaram, Jaggampeta and Gandepalli mandals from last fortnight and doctors suspected these fevers to be Chikun Gunya.

Medical teams have collected blood samples from different villages and sent the same to the National Virology Institute, Pune. Some 2,000 patients from different villages are suffering from the new viral disease in the district and the number of fever cases are increasing by the day in all the Primary Health Centres and area hospitals in the district. Private medical practitioners said that most of the symptoms matched that of Chikun Gunya.

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