Rains, high surveillance bring down dengue cases

Continuous heavy rain and increased surveillance activities have reduced the number of dengue cases in the state compared to last year.

Last year, 17,844 cases were reported in the state with 10 deaths. This year till July, 1,483 cases have been reported.

Dr Mohammed Sharif, research officer, National Vector Borne Diseases Control Programme, said last year, there was ground for mosquito breeding.

“This year has been good both in terms of the weather and surveillance activities. Continuous heavy rains have not allowed much of mosquito breeding. However, our health workers have been continuously monitoring the situation in preventing and controlling dengue cases. There is daily larva surveillance by ASHA workers, cross-checked by junior and senior health assistants,” he said.

Dr Sharif said districts like Dakshina Kannada (DK), Hassan and Udupi have shown slight increase in the number of cases with DK reporting 361 cases, followed by Hassan reporting 129 cases, Udupi 124 cases and Shivamogga reporting 111 cases since January 2018.

He said Haveri and Chitradurga have shown slight increase in Chikungunya cases with 327 and 106 cases reported, respectively.

BBMP - 200 cases in 45 days

In BBMP areas, there has been an increase of 200 cases of dengue reported in the past 45 days. In May, BBMP's health department reported 313 cases.

With its increased reporting network through the Public Health Information and Epidemiology Cell (PHIEC), it have reported 497 cases of dengue and 64 cases of Chikungunya since January 2018.

PHIEC was set up by BBMP, empanelling 866 private hospitals and 107 BBMP health centres, to understand the epidemiology of public health through reporting of cases. The cell is receiving daily reports of cases from 506 active hospitals including St John's, St Philomena's, Chinmaya Mission, Manipal, Apollo and Fortis.

An official at PHIEC said nearly 80% of the hospitals are complying and updating the reports daily, the remaining 20% may have difficulties due to lack of manpower to generate reports.