Thiruvananthapuram: An upswing in the number of viral-fever cases, possibly dengue, in rural areas has made the district health administration mobilise field-level health workers for preventive action.

Reports of the increasing number of fever cases have been coming from suburbs, such as Poovachal, Kuttichal and Kattakkada, following which a team of health officials, led by the District Medical Officer, visited these places recently.

Whether all cases are of dengue is yet to be confirmed, as blood-test results are awaited. However, preventive measures, such as fogging, spraying of insecticides and proper garbage disposal, have been launched to check breeding of mosquitoes, which spreads dengue.

The team visited the tribal settlements in Podiyam and Pothode forest areas, where health-care centres are not easily accessible and poor maternal health and malnutrition in children are rampant. The health centre nearest to these locations is the Kuttichal primary health centre.

Sub-centre

Senior health officials said a sub-centre would be immediately started at Podiyam and a junior health inspector and a junior public health nurse posted there temporarily till permanent recruitments could be done. One doctor would be posted additionally to the Kuttichal primary health centre immediately.

As most tribal people come down from their settlements only once a week to visit the village market, a weekly medical clinic is being planned near the market.

Meeting

The first executive committee meeting of the District Health and Family Welfare Society, a registered body formed for the implementation of health initiatives under the National Rural Health Mission (Arogya Keralam), was held here on Tuesday.

The District Collector is the chairperson of the society, the District Medical Officer, secretary, and the District Programme Manager of the mission, convener.

All primary health centres have been allotted an annual untied fund of Rs. 25,000 for local health action under the mission. The meeting decided to utilise part of these funds to control spread of vectors and other preventive activities to check the spread of viral fever, dengue and chikungunya.

G. Sunil Kumar, District Programme Manager of the mission, said that ward-level health and sanitation committees had been constituted in all 116 municipal wards, 86 Corporation wards and 1,786 grama panchayats wards in the district, as envisaged under the mission.

Each of these committees is chaired by the elected representative of the ward and has a junior health inspector or a junior public health nurse as convener and registered medical practitioners in the ward, Kudumbasree and anganwadi members and so on as members.

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