‘Malarial deaths to halve this year’

Nearly 30% of the people who died of malaria in Mumbai last year were living alone and devoid of any familial support. The information was chanced upon by civic officials while conducting an audit of malarial deaths in the city in 2009.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) intends to cut down malarial deaths — 198 in 2009 — by half this year, and has since September embarked on an audit to collate data so that it can be contained.

Family support, or the lack of it, has been a major finding of the audit. Dr GT Ambe, executive health officer, told DNA, “Our audit will focus on whether the patient had come from outside Mumbai. The audit will also focus on the type of family support he or she had, as we found that 20-30% of them were living without any family support.”

Dr Ambe said, “We will also ascertain if s/he went to a private or a municipal doctor. We want to analyse where the delay was. The audit also involves tracking down whether the patient was from a slum, a non-slum and especially on slums running parallel to railway lines.”

The idea behind the audit is on the lines of that conducted after the fear of swine flu “outbreak”, which helped civic authorities contain the latter. There were 40,000 cases of malaria and 198 malarial deaths recorded last year.

Besides conducting audits on all malarial deaths, BMC’s health marshals will also concentrate on slum pockets and construction sites.

Other factors noted in the audit were whether the patient was present in a co-morbid condition. “Like in case of diabetes or an ischemic heart disease where the resistance is low. It was also found that there were some who took Ayurvedic medicines. Malaria is because of decrease in breaking of red blood corpuscles, like jaundice. So those who took medication for jaundice actually had malaria,” said Ambe.

Other audit points noted were on patients who contracted infection and had come from other cities. “Many have come from highly endemic malarial districts like West Bengal, District 24 Paraganas,” said Ambe.

BMC will attack slum pockets and construction sites also. “We are trying to concentrate on slum pockets and construction sites. Wherever labourers are present we will diagnose them for malaria and treat them. We will also sensitise private medical practitioners by arranging workshops through their associations. We feel this will bring us results in bring down malarial deaths,” he said.

Target: slums and construction sites
“Post H1N1 deaths last year, we encountered increasing malarial deaths, which has prompted the BMC to come up with some first-time measures to tackle malaria,” said additional municipal commissioner (health) Manisha Mhaiskar.

“For the first time, we have conducted a case wise record of malarial deaths. Each malarial death after September 1, 2009 has been audited. We have found a clear link between high level of building construction activity and incidence of malaria,” said Mhaiskar.

As a result of this study, the BMC has now planned to put the onus of pest control on the builder from May 1 onwards, she said.