Andhra Pradesh - Guntur   

Guntur in the grip of fevers

Guntur: With the Southwest monsoon bringing copious rains, fevers too have engulfed the district like wildfire. The Medical and Health (M&H) Department is grappling with viral fevers that afflicted a large number of people. Scores of dengue fever cases have been reported and also a few deaths but the M&H officials maintain that most of the patients are suffering from serious complications not arising from dengue.

Ponnur, Chilakaluripet and other towns and the district headquarters too have thousands of people admitted to hospitals with fevers, which required urgent steps to curb the menace.

As the situation turned worse, special wards were set apart in government hospitals for dengue patients and anti-larval operations have been intensified in the vulnerable areas to check proliferation of mosquitoes.

While necessary steps were taken in the Government General Hospital (GGH) in Guntur and area hospitals, private doctors were asked to submit daily reports of the types of fevers treated by them to facilitate concerted efforts for controlling the diseases.

The situation is being jointly monitored by District Medical and Health Officer M Gopi Naik and GGH Superintendent D Phanibhushan.

Emphasis is laid on continuous flow of information about the seasonal diseases prevalent in remote areas which have poor access to hospitals.

Medical camps

Special medical camps are being conducted in such places and patients are being referred to either the GGH or other nearest major hospitals.

This is yielding the desired results to some extent but hundreds of fresh cases of fevers are being reported every day posing a major challenge to the M&H officials who are obviously bogged down by staff constraints and poor infrastructure.

For putting up better performance, the GGH has recently submitted proposals to Andhra Pradesh Vaidya Vidhana Parishad for procurement of equipment worth nearly Rs 5 crore. It was around the same time that Government's Principal Secretary (Health) J Satyanarayana had inspected the GGH and discussed its requirements.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Suicide bid by woman constable
Guntur in the grip of fevers
NCC cadets undertake beach cleaning drive at Suryalanka
Monsoon trek tomorrow
Children's brush with creativity

Copyright © 2010, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu