Red tape, staff crunch add to dengue cases

PUNE: Red tape derailing the procurement of insecticides, inadequate field staff and dismal efforts to create awareness among people have collectively led to the outbreak-like situation of dengue fever in Pune.
Insecticides needed to prevent breeding and contain the mosquito menace were not purchased for over a year and a half, during which time the civic body battled objections regarding their high price and later an inter-departmental tug of war over the tender process.Insecticides were finally procured by July end.
"There is no denying that we could not purchase insecticides for the last one-and-a-half years. Activists working in the field had raised objections over their purchase at a higher rate though that was not the case. But the objections stalled the process of purchase throughout last year. On May 13 this year, the standing committee approved the tender for purchasing insecticides worth Rs 2.69 crore for 2014-15. However, due to inter-departmental differences, the tender process got further delayed. The insecticides were finally made available towards the end of July," said S T Pardeshi, medical officer of health (MoH), PMC.
Pardeshi, however, said the civic health department would borrow insecticides from state health department to check the mosquito menace during this period. "We borrowed essential insecticides from state health officials whenever needed," he added.
However, it wasn't just non-availability of insecticides that were the only hurdle in containing the mosquito menace. The civic body's insect control department has been reeling from a staff crunch of field workers for the last many years. "Around 40 % of field worker posts and super field workers are still vacant. These are the people who actually make door to door visits, spray insecticides and educate people about precautionary measures to prevent indoor mosquito breeding," said a senior health official.
"Earlier, we had 300 field workers. An additional 150 field workers were taken recently on contract a month ago," said Sanjeev Wavare, assistant medical officer of health (AMoH) and head of insect control department. Wavare took charge of the insect control department in July end.
For the year 2014-15, PMC's health department has been allocated a budget of Rs 12.75 lakh, but when TOI probed officials about the amount spent on awareness, they admitted that barring printing of handbills this month, the money has remained largely underutilised.
"We have printed three lakh pamphlets this month. Barring the expense of approximately Rs 4 lakh gone into their printing, the funds have remained unutilized," said a senior civic health official requesting anonymity.
In 2012, the Union health ministry's team had carried out larval survey in the dengue-affected areas of Pune city and had observed that the PMC had failed in carrying out adequate health education activities among its citizens about how to tackle the breeding sites of Aedes aegypti mosquito, the dengue vector.
Calling it a collective failure of the civic body and civic administration, senior activist Maj Gen (retd) SCN Jatar said that successive municipal commissioners should have used their powers to contain outbreak of dengue. "It is sad that successive municipal commissioners have paid little attention to health. Corporators also raise their voice when their relatives and friends get affected. Inappropriate handling of garbage is also one of the reasons for rise in mosquito borne infections in Pune city," Jatar said.
Vector-borne diseases have been rising since June. The city continues to report a substantial number of dengue cases every day since then. On Friday, 35 fresh cases were reported. With this, the tally of positive cases rose to 2,237. Seven persons have succumbed to dengue infection so far.