Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Intensive drive to prevent chikungunya

Special Correspondent

COIMBATORE: District health authorities plan to carry out an intensive drive from July 13 to July 20 to prevent chikungunya. This will be in addition to the daily process of the Health Department's staff educating people on sanitation wherever they find it lacking.

The intensive drive will include education of various sections that live amid unhygienic conditions. The main focus will be on unsafe storage of freshwater in which the Aedes egypti mosquito carrying the chikungunya virus (alpha virus) breeds.

The State government has ordered a week's special drive till July 16. Besides this, the district health services wing will also carry out one.

In spite of close to 200 cases having been reported in neighbouring Erode, health officials here are certain that no case has been reported across Coimbatore. This despite the possibility of the mosquitoes carrying the virus being capable of reaching Coimbatore by buses. They huddle in dark corners of the vehicles. Undisturbed, they can reach the city.

Yet, preventive measures have kept these vectors (carriers of the virus) off Coimbatore, according to the Deputy Director of Health Services, Porkai Pandian. "Our intensive drive to prevent an outbreak of dengue last year as also round-the-year efforts to contain its sporadic occurrence have actually helped us in keeping chikungunya also at bay," he says.

Aedes egypti mosquito is the carrier of both the dengue and chikungunya virus. Therefore, storing water in airtight containers and not allowing rainwater to stagnate in discarded tyres, bottles or tins helps prevent both diseases.

Mr. Pandian says the mosquito density has come down way below normal level owing to low breeding. Instead of 83 female mosquitoes per an hour of collection, only 12 to 15 had been found, he says. Extra fogging too had been done.

The Deputy Director attributes the fall in the density to source reduction (fresh water stagnation). "We drained fresh water from open containers in a door-to-door drive across the district.

Health officials and workers toppled every discarded item that stored water and educated people on the measures to prevent mosquito breeding."

As for monitoring, he says health workers will look for clinical symptoms such as joint pain, fever and rashes for treatment to begin immediately as blood test to identify chikungunya can be done only at Pune.

The prevention plan for the entire State also lays emphasis on the role of the local bodies. With more staff, they can help in total sensitisation, identification of cases and in methods such as fogging.

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