BHUBANESWAR: The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) will procure 36 more portable fogging machines and two vehicle-mounted fogging machines to tackle the rising vector-borne diseases in the State Capital.The decision comes in the wake of rising dengue cases which is now close to 600 in the city.
Though the civic body has two vehicle-mounted and four portable fogging machines available with it at present, these are insufficient to deal with the mosquito menace in the city which has 67 wards.
"The machines are being procured to ensure that we have at least one fogging machine for every two wards. Besides the more portable machines we will have, the easier it will be to take control measures in the affected areas," said Municipal Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Singh.
As the portable machines can be easily carried inside residential premises and buildings for fogging it will prove helpful in combating the mosquito-borne disease, Singh said.
He added that greater number of vehicle-mounted machines will be helpful in disinfecting the large number of targeted areas every day.The civic body has already floated tender for procurement of the machines.
And till the machines are procured, the civic body will continue to outsource them.Singh said that starting from field-level health workers to assistant engineers, the staff have been engaged in decentralised manner at zonal level and anti-larval measures and awareness drives in different wards have been expedited to fight the menace effectively.
The dengue infection tally of the Capital jumped to 598 after detection of 35 new cases from different parts of the city in the last 24 hours. BMC officials said larvae have been detected in 675 breeding sites across the city.
A total 2,239 breeding sites have been identified and destroyed so far.Officials said a total 5,725 houses in the affected areas have been covered in the sensitisation programme so far.