Kerala - Pathanamthitta   

MLA alleges failure to combat chikungunya

Staff Reporter

Chief Minister urged to visit affected areas

SPECIAL CARE: Patients with suspected chikungunya being protected from mosquito bites, with nets covering their beds, at the `fever ward' at the General Hospital in Pathanamthitta on Friday.

PATHANAMTHITTA: K. Sivadasan Nair, MLA, has alleged that the Government machinery has miserably failed in effectively combating the viral fever, especially chikungunya, that has been spreading in different parts of the district in an epidemic proportion for the past one month.

Addressing a press conference here on Friday, the MLA alleged that Government's casual approach towards extending emergency medical care facility and relief to the affected areas aggravated the plight of common people, especially those in the fever-hit panchayats.

Mr. Nair alleged that various vector-control and disease prevention programmes announced by the Government and the district administration too turned out to be an `eye-wash.' The much-publicised programme to burn Aparajitha-choornam in all the wards of the affected panchayats as part of the vector-control drive recently turned out to be a farce as the authorities even failed to supply the Ayurvedic powder to the panchayats, he alleged.

The MLA alleged that the condition of various public healthcare centres in the district was pitiable, especially owing to shortage of medical and paramedical staff and not to speak of the poor infrastructure facility.

"The Government is yet to dole out relief to the bereaved families of the seven persons who had died of viral fever in the district during the past one month." Lack of co-ordination among various departments has been marring the chikungunya eradication drive and vector-control programmes in the district and the Government was yet to ensure active cooperation of the local self-government institutions (LSGIs) in this regard, he alleged.

Mr Nair alleged that the criminal negligence on the part of the Pathanamthitta municipality and the Kozhencherry grama panchayat in the disposal of solid waste in the two towns has been causing pollution problems in the locality, leaving the common people at serious health risk.

The MLA said that Chief Minister V.S.Achuthanandan should intervene in the matter without any further delay so as to ensure effective disease-prevention drive and to provide adequate relief to the affected persons belonging to the poorer sections of society.

Mr. Nair also called for setting up a district-level disaster management unit that could effectively intervene during such crisis situations.

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