Alert after dengue cases rise in Parwanoo

Ambika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Solan, July 13

With number of dengue cases rising to 35 in the industrial town of Parwanoo, the health authorities have invoked the provisions of the Epidemic Disease Act to penalise people who fail to check the spread of the disease causing mosquito.

Chief Medical Officer, Dr RK Daroch, said under the Act such people would be imposed a fine up to Rs 500 for repeatedly failing to check mosquito breeding. The medical officer of an area would proceed against them before the authorized executive magistrate, including Assistant Commissioner, Parwanoo, SDM and tehsildar.

Medical Officer, Health, Dr NK Gupta, said out of 35 cases which had been detected in Parwanoo, 14 pertained to the neighbouring Kalka. These people commute to Parwanoo for work on a daily basis.

The CMO informed that three hospitals in the district had been categorized as sentinel surveillance hospitals. These are regional hospital, Solan, ESI, Parwanoo and CHC, Nalagarh. Requisite medical facilities like ELISA reader and dengue test kits had been made available for undertaking diagnosis and confirmatory testing of dengue.

Since the industrial belt of Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh is vulnerable to dengue, these facilities have also been made available at Baddi.

As an added precaution all patients showing symptoms of dengue were being tested for the disease. With two blood storage units at Parwanoo and Nalagarh, the Health Department was equipped to deal with any eventuality, said Dr Daroch.

The Parwanoo town has been divided into six sectors where municipal committee officials have also been assigned the task of creating awareness along with other departments. A door-to-door campaign to detect fever patients and check the breeding of mosquitoes has also begun in Parwanoo.

Since 14 cases pertain to the neighbouring Kalka, the Chief Medical Officer, Panchkula, will also be informed about these cases so that the requisite precautions can be taken to check the disease in Haryana, informed Dr Daroch.

He added that the dengue patients were being provided free medicines and testing facilities besides transportation facilities through the 108 Ambulance services to ensure that they were not inconvenienced at any stage.