BERHAMPUR: With monsoon rains bringing back fears of dengue outbreak in the city, the Berhampur Municipal Corporation (BeMC) appears completely ill-prepared to tackle the situation.
Already 12 persons have been afflicted by the disease this season. While eight dengue patients were already discharged, four persons who were detected on July 17 are undergoing treatment.
Special facilities have been set up in MKCGMCH and City Hospital for dengue patients.
However, measures to check breeding of aedes mosquitoes, the cause of dengue, are still to be carried out by the civic body.
The steps are confined to meetings only raising fears of a return of 2012 outbreak, Ganjam District Malaria Officer Dr R Jagdish Patnaik rued.
As per official records, in 2012, 533 dengue patients were treated at MKCGMCH and another 100 at private hospitals in Andhra Pradesh and Bhubaneswar. Since then, the district administration claimed to have taken precautionary measures to check dengue, but the disease continued to reappear in rainy season.
Though the Berhampur Municipal Corporation (BeMC) has an urban malaria control wing which runs from CDMO office with 28 staff, they hardly spray insecticides in drains and areas stagnated with dirty water.
During the last couple of months, the Collector had categorically directed the officials concerned to ensure zero breeding of aedes mosquito.
But the civic body and health official have turned a blind eye on the issue.
While several infrastructure projects, including Janibili water supply, are yet to be completed, pits and drains dug up for the purpose have virtually turned into mosquito breeding sites.
Prem Nagar, only 200 metre from the BeMC office, has an artificial water body that has turned into a dumping yard for slum dwellers.
Similarly, the city has around 260 slums scattered in every ward. Despite implementation of several housing schemes for poor, the BeMC has failed to make a slum-free city.
Though more than 35 per cent of the city’s population lives in slums, development plans of the BeMC gathering dust in files.
Living in unhygienic surroundings, the slum dwellers are highly prone to diseases like diarrhoea, dengue and malaria. Over two lakh people reside in makeshift structures in these slums.
Meanwhile, several social organisations have urged the district administration to initiate measures to prevent spreading of water-borne diseases including dengue.