The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has served notices to thousands of housing societies and commercial establishments since January, collecting fines worth lakhs of rupees, to curb dengue. Ironically, it forgot to check its own backyard.
KEM hospital in Parel has emerged as a hotbed of dengue, with 23-year-old resident doctor Dr Shruti Khobragade succumbing to it two weeks ago and three more doctors contracting it in due course. It has been over two weeks that hospital dean Dr Shubhangi Parker has refrained from providing details about the breeding spots on campus. In spite of promises that statistics of number of employees that have suffered from dengue will be made available, Parker has delayed replying to pertinent questions about patients and breeding spots prevalent in city's largest medical college and public hospital. The hospital is home to a thousand patients and three thousand outpatients on any given day.
In a press briefing on Wednesday, officials refused to comment on the hospital's condition. They instead defended their stand by saying they were launching prosecutions in cases of errant housing societies and commercial establishments, where breeding sites were found.
"As many as 13,247 notices have been served by BMC officials to localities where potential or active breeding sites of dengue were discovered. Of the 864 localities, active breeding spots and larvae of aedes aegypti were discovered in 344. We launched direct prosecutions against them without even giving them a buffer period of three days to correct their mistakes, because the shortcomings were very grave," said Sanjay Deshmukh, additional commissioner (health), BMC.
"Of the 7 lakh residences scanned for breeding sites, 10% were found in slum areas, 40% in old chawls and rest 50% in posh or middle class housing societies."
While Mumbai has 2,900 suspected cases of dengue, where the diagnosis is extremely difficult to confirm but symptoms are exhibited, 659 confirmed cases were reported. Ten deaths have come to light this year.
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