Within weeks of taking charge, the new Ashok Gehlot government has a problem on its hands.
The Rajasthan state machinery, which was working overtime due to Assembly elections followed by a Zika virus outbreak late last year, may have underestimated the threat of swine flu. Within weeks of taking charge, the new Ashok Gehlot government has a problem on its hands. As soon as effective screening for swine flu was initiated, the number of people who tested positive for swine flu rose.
Swine flu claimed 221 lives in 2018, but has already killed 51 in the state in just 21 days of 2019. "In 2018, 2,375 people tested positive for swine flu, and in the 21 days of the new year, already 1,335 people have tested positive," a health official said.
Officials said the swine flu cases haven't gone up all of a sudden, as suggested by statistical inputs from the districts. They instead blamed the outgoing Vasundhara Raje government's preoccupation with Assembly elections for ineffective screening last year.
But even more importantly, it was the zika outbreak in Jaipur that played a major role in swine flu's spread going under the radar.
"The entire medical team was pressed into action to control the largest ever spread of zika virus reported in Rajasthan. State capital Jaipur was at the centre of it, right when the tourist season had kicked off," an official said.
Zika, like dengue and malaria, is vector-borne, and hasn't been reported except for a couple of cities in India. And though there were no casualties in Jaipur, the spread was swift and took the department by surprise.
The issue of swine flu rocked the Rajasthan Assembly on Monday when the House was witness to a blame game between Health Minister Raghu Sharma and former health minister Kalicharan Saraf, who accused each other of being lackadaisical in curbing the epidemic. While Saraf accused Sharma of hiding patients' figures, the latter denied the allegations and claimed the department is monitoring the situation. He also said they have launched a three-day drive to screen people with the virus, something that wasn't done earlier.
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