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Kuldip Bhatia
Ludhiana, October 12
There seems to be no respite from dengue and chikungunya with 14 fresh cases of the latter testing positive today. One more woman patient, under treatment at a city hospital, has also tested positive for dengue. With these fresh cases, the number of dengue patents admitted to different hospitals here till now has reached 327 and the number of confirmed cases of chikungunya 64.
According to health officials, in all 236 dengue patients were from this district, 82 shifted here from other districts of Punjab and nine belonged to other states.
As dengue and chikungunya hold the city population in a vice-like grip, both the Health Department and the Municipal Corporation are drawing flak from the city population for their criminal negligence in taking timely measures to break the breeding cycle of mosquitoes.
Most of the city residents feel the routine exercise of joint meetings between the civic body, Health Department and the district administration held before the onset of the rainy season to check breeding of mosquitoes and coordinate for other activities such as fumigation, anti-mosquito spray, etc, were a farce as attack of dengue, malaria and chikungunya in the city and its neighbourhood had become a regular feature.
“The so-called awareness programme launched by the Health Department to apprise the people of preventive measures against vector-borne diseases is nowhere to be seen and about fumigation, to be carried out by the MC, the less said the better,” said Neena Gulati, a college lecturer residing in Guru Nanak Pura.
Many other accusing fingers were being pointed towards the MC for erratic and rather “selective” fogging the city localities. Darshan Singh, a shopkeeper of Haibowal, said fogging was being carried out by the MC only in the areas where VIPs lived and other areas, especially in the residential localities along the Budha Nullah, fogging remained elusive or at the most a rare event.
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