The Hindu : Front Page : WHO team for chikungunya-hit areas

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Wednesday, Oct 04, 2006
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WHO team for chikungunya-hit areas

Staff Reporter

The team has promised to bring kits for diagnosing the disease: Sreemathy

ALAPPUZHA: A team of experts from the World Health Organisation will visit the areas affected by chikungunya on October 5 to assess the situation and provide necessary assistance, Health Minister P.K. Sreemathy has said.

At a press conference here on Tuesday, Ms. Sreemathy said the initiative of the WHO came in the wake of a request of the Government for help. The Minister said she contacted the WHO headquarters in Washington and spoke to its vice-president in this regard. She said the WHO team would include J.P. Narain, director, WHO, New Delhi. The Minister said the team promised to bring kits for diagnosing chikungunya. Ms. Sreemathy said an e-mail received by the Government from the WHO headquarters promised all assistance.

She said the handicap faced by the State in tackling the disease was the inadequacies of the State Virology Institute at Alappuzha.

She said she sought the assistance of the Union Government to develop the institute. It was important to identify whether there were any other viruses leading to deaths, the Minister said.

She said an expert team from the National Institute of Virology and the National Institute of Communicable Diseases would visit the State to study the chikungunya outbreak. The Minister conceded that the steps taken by the Government failed to bring the situation in Cherthala totally under control. It was true that some of the officials failed to implement the directives of the Government.

But the Government's initiatives solved the shortage of medicines and the absence of staff in Government hospitals in the Cherthala taluk, which was affected the most by chikungunya, Ms. Sreemathy said.

She said the Government had taken steps to activate an inpatient wing at health centres in coastal villages ravaged by chikungunya.

To solve the shortage of pharmacists, the Government had sought the help of association of pharmacists to provide more pharmacists, who would appointed at Government hospitals on a temporary basis, she said.

Ms. Sreemathy said the Government would deploy postgraduate medical students to chikungunya-ravaged areas to solve the shortage of doctors.

She said steps were being taken on a war footing to start fogging operations as part of mosquito eradication measures. Fogging began in the district on Tuesday at 3 p.m.

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