‘Dengue cases on wane in Odisha’s Barbil’

Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Barbil, July 17:

The number of dengue cases is on the decline, expressed a member of the Central team comprising of doctors today which visited the worst-affected Barbil in Odisha’s Keonjhar district.

The team headed by Dr. Gagan Singh Sonal visited the affected wards and took stock of the dengue situation. After the field survey of the area, Dr. Sonal praised the steps taken by the administration to tackle the situation. He attributed lack of public awareness to spread of the disease and said “dengue has turned epidemic”.

“Earlier, 70 per cent blood samples tested positive for the vector-borne disease but yesterday’s report shows dengue situation of Barbil has dropped to 17 percent,” Dr Sonal stated.

A member of the team expressed unhappiness over lack of public awareness and requested people to evacuate stagnant water from air cooler and discharge water from refrigerator every day.

“As there is no medicine for dengue, we are focusing more on prevention and have started this mission since July 4. We are preventing the spread of the menace in different wards with the help of the Municipal Corporation, Asha and Anganwadi workers. Some people are storing tyres on roof top due to lack of awareness and rainwater is stagnating in tyres facilitating mosquito breeding. Here, people have not understood this till date,” the member described.

On the other hand, 157 dengue patients are undergoing treatment at SCB Medical College and Hospital out of which 10 have been admitted to ICU and 147 in special dengue wards.

In view of the increasing number of dengue patients, SCB has increased its bed number to 175, informed SCB Emergency Officer Dr. Bhubanananda Moharana.