Agartala: Tripura has witnessed a 23 per cent drop in the malaria cases as compared to 2009, a top health official said on Sunday. Citing that four deaths had been recorded in hospitals this year, Director of Family Welfare and Preventive Medicine department Dr R K Dhar said there has been a sharp drop in the number of malaria fatalities recently.
Dhar said while 1.43 lakh blood samples were examined during 2010, a total of 10,377 slides had been tested positive.
However, in Tripura 90 per cent people were affected by Plasmodium Felsiperum which is more fatal than Plasmodium Vivax, he added.
The entire Dhalai district and Kanchanpur subdivision of North Tripura district have been identified as high endemic zone for malaria and Rupaicheeri and Santir Bazar blocks of South Tripura district and parts of Bishalgarh sub-division of West Tripura district rated as highly-affected areas, he said.
“We are focusing on preventive steps as well as curative measures to reduce the outbreak of malaria,” Dhar said.
With entire Tripura already been declared as malaria-drug resistant state by the ministry, “there is no dearth of drugs and equipment to conduct rapid diagnosis even in far flung areas,” he said.
As part of the preventive steps, around 3 lakh medicated mosquito nets were distributed among the villagers living in malaria-prone zones last year.
This year, the state government had already sought 1.5 lakh medicated nets from Centre under the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP), one of the flagship programmes of Health and Family Welfare Ministry.
As per the guidelines of the ministry, Village Health and Nutrition Day are being organised twice in a month for each panchayat and village committee (tribal area) for creating awareness and this proved useful to contain the disease, he said.
“The situation will improve further when the state government’s plan to set up at least one health institution in each gram panchayat and village committee by 2012 sees the light of day,” he added. (PTI)