Two months ago, 33-year-old Mulund resident Jay Pagnis got high fever. He started experiencing shooting pain in the orbit of his eyes and his bone joints hurt excruciatingly. "I had dengue, my blood test confirmed it. Luckily, I recovered in a week," said Pagnis.
Having suffered the ordeal himself, Pagnis, an IT professional, started work on developing a smartphone mobile application, War on Dengue (www.warondengue.brique.in). The app, which can be downloaded for free from Google Playstore, gives complete information on the disease and practically helps patients and their relatives tackle it.
Through the geographical positioning system technology, it helps a user identify hospitals nearest to his/her residence, supplying with their contact information as well. "We have identified locations of all hospitals by culling out information from Google maps and displayed it onto the map. The hospitals are divided according to regions and localities in different cities. The app provides information about hospitals across the world," explained Pagnis.
The idea to develop such an app came to him after he realised that there was an alarming amount of ignorance in the neighbourhood about dengue. "Every day, I read about at least one person dying of dengue in Mumbai. People still do not know that the mosquito breeds inside homes. I made the app for people to develop a better understanding of the disease," he said.
Close to a hundred have already downloaded the app, which briefs a user about the symptoms, myths as well as facts associated with it. "People think aedes aegypti bites only during the day, actually, it can bite anytime. Moreover, the perception is mosquitoes breed in gutters or nullahs, but, in reality, they breed in clean stagnant water in buckets or potted plants inside homes," he said.
Pagnis knows at least 25 people in his neighbourhood who were affected by dengue. "In the app, we have a feedback section where cases of dengue can be reported. We are compiling the number of reported cases," he added.
While 19 have died due to dengue this year, the civic body has admitted to only 12 deaths. Over 4,000 people in the city are feared to have contracted dengue this year.
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