From Our Correspondent
Guwahati: In the wake of three deaths due to dengue in a week in Guwahati city, chief minister Tarun Gogoi on Saturday held an emergency meeting of the health officials, Mayor of Guwahati, officials of Guwahati municipal corporation and other concerned department to review the steps taken by the administration to prevent occurrence of the diseases as much as possible.
Assuring that the government will take all measures to control the disease, he directed that measures will be taken for killing dengue mosquitoes in all the 31 municipal wards by fogging. Stating 12 centres had been set up for testing dengue infection, Gogoi said a new diagnostic centre was also established in the MMC Civil Hospital here.
State health minister Dr Himanta Bishwa Sharma said that so far 41 dengue cases have been detected in Assam including 35 in Guwahati city.
He said so far there were two confirmed deaths and one suspected death due to dengue.
Earlier this week, a husband-wife couple — Raju and Loni Dewan — died within two days of the deadly disease.
Another person, identified as Kandarpa Deka, also died on his way to the hospital.
“Dengue cases have not reached epidemic scale. I appeal to everyone in the state that there is no point to get panicked. We have 41 Dengue cases so far this year. It has not reached an epidemic scale,” Biswa Sarma told reporters here.
“So far we have two confirmed dengue deaths in the state. The third one is being investigated,” the minister said.
The health department has set up four blood samples collection centre in the city for detection of dengue cases
He said last year total 966 cases were detected. He informed that as per official data there has been 80 per cent increase in dengue cases all over the country and did not rule out detection of much more cases in coming days in the light of it.
Dr Sharma appealed the people not to be panicky as the disease was far from assuming epidemic proportions anywhere in the state.
He said the dengue mosquito density in Guwahati per 1.5 km radius is 3.3 per cent against the scale of 10 per cent for an epidemic outbreak.
Emerging out of the meeting on dengue outbreak with the chief minister, the Mayor of Guwahati Municipal Corporation, Abir Patra said that 30,000 fogging machines were being procured immediately to fog all the areas in Guwahati city including hilly residential areas.
He said a massive mass awareness campaign would be launched from Sunday to make people aware of the precautionary measures to be taken to prevent occurrence of dengue. (with inputs from PTI)