Two days after a doctor attached to KEM hospital died of dengue, corporators created a ruckus over the issue in the civic body.
Shruti Khobragade, 23, a resident doctor with the civic-run hospital, died of dengue on Sunday evening. During the health committee meeting held on Tuesday, members of the panel trained guns at the municipal administration for its poor management in tackling the disease.
"It is a serious issue if a doctor attached to a major hospital loses her life. The BMC undertakes programmes to handle dengue complaints only during the monsoon. But it gets complacent during the non-monsoon period. During winter, mosquito breeding goes up. What preparations has the BMC made?" asked Anuradha Pednekar, Shiv Sena corporator from Kurla.
Pednekar also demanded the BMC crack down on people who don't co-operate while it carries out fogging/fumigation.
Dr Saeeda Khan, NCP corporator, reiterated the demand to make a request before the state to notify dengue, in order to have a concrete plan to tackle it. "If the disease is notified, then the corporation will have a pan-city action plan to tackle it," said Dr Khan.
She also alleged that BMC staff many a time use kerosene instead of mosquito larvicide (ML) oil while fogging/fumigation. "So, how do we ascertain the chemicals used have the right combination of oil? Hence, there has to be a system to verify effectiveness of the chemicals to be used," added Khan.
Geeta Gawali, chairperson of the health committee, said the meeting was adjourned after members were dissatisfied with the replies they received from the civic administration. "Both the additional municipal commissioner (Sanjay Deshmukh) and executive health officer (Padmaja Kesarkar) are out of country for health conferences. So, another senior official had represented the department at the meeting. The explanation the department made did not go down well with the members, following which the meeting was adjourned," Gawali said.
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