India – The state health department has once again hauled up the KMC for not reporting the outbreak of vector-borne diseases across the city.
Apparently unhappy with the work carried out by the civic body, the state health department has provided a fresh set of guidelines for reporting incidents of vector-borne disease cases.
According to the guidelines issued by the state health department, the civic body will prepare and present the Annual Blood Examination Rate (ABER) on malarial attack. The ABER is arrived at by dividing the number of slides examined by the total population of the area at risk and then multiplying it by 100.
A civic official said the KMC was unable to provide its ABER, as such a figure was not available with them. It was found that the ABER in the city stood at four per cent, which actually should be around 10 per cent.
Moreover, the state health department has also sought from the KMC a complete entomological map where ward-wise report on malaria attacks is to be prepared. Details will also update on a Geographical Information Survey (GIS) enabled map. The map will identify the concentration and ward-wise trend of malaria attacks in the area.
At present, the KMC lacks an entomological map where potential breeding grounds and the type of mosquito that breed in it can be identified. Even the areas that have been affected are to be mentioned in it. An idea to have such a map was mooted during the late 1990s when malaria cases were on the rise. But the matter died a natural death with civic officials losing interest in it.
Later, in 2005, when there was an outbreak of dengue in the city, an attempt was made to prepare a similar map. Civic officials became complacent after incidents of dengue went down in later years. Presently though there has been no such attempt to prepare a GIS-enabled map, officials said.
