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Water & vector-borne diseases to be on the rise soon, say docs

Civic authorities say they have started to implement countermeasures to prevent breeding of mosquito; experts suggests a public awareness campaign to inform masses of the same

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(L) Women wade through the waterlogged streets of Kathwada to fill water on Friday; (R) An NDRF doctor attends to a woman at a relief centre for flood victims on the outskirts of the city on Friday —
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The heavy rainfall, which provided much-needed respite from the heat and recharged groundwater levels, is now a cause of alarm for civic authorities as the wetter-than-normal monsoon that hit Gujarat is probably going to produce a bumper crop of mosquitoes. This has led to authorities worrying about a spike in vector-borne illnesses in the coming weeks.

“There is a high chance of a rise in water-borne and vector-borne illnesses in next one or two weeks. At present, there is a rise in gastroenteritis cases as contamination of water has increased,” said Dr Bhavin Solanki, the in-charge officer of health at Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC).

The heavy rainfall has created ideal breeding conditions for mosquitoes, but the civic body is hopeful that breeding has not started yet.

“Fresh water kept on pouring in due to the continuing rain, which gave mosquitoes no chance to breed. However, this will not be the case once it stops raining,” added Dr Solanki.

“We have doubled, and in some cases tripled, the use of disinfectants. Earlier, we used to sprinkle 10 tonnes of lime and chlorine powder mixture in a single day. This has now increased to 25 to 30 tonnes a day,” explained Dr Solanki.

Dr Dileep Mavlankar, director of the Indian Institute of Public Health at Gandhinagar, also worries about a rise in diseases.

“With incessant rains, contamination of water has increased, which led to a rise in diarrhoea cases. Vector-borne diseases will start to appear after two weeks. The civic authority should start taking preventative actions while undertaking a massive awareness campaign informing the masses of the same,” said Dr Mavlankar.

In July, the civic body has collected around 4,000 water samples, of which 179 were found to be unfit. Also, on a daily basis, around 3,000 blood samples are being collected from people with viral fever living in slum pockets.

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