Kolkata civic body rubbishes reports on dengue control failure

Kolkata, Oct 23 (IANS) Drawing flak for its handling of the dengue menace in the city, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation on Monday maintained it has been effectively able to control the spread and alleged a "deliberate attempt" at misinformation about its tackling of the disease that has claimed at least 30 lives in West Bengal.

"We have been on the ground since January 7. There is a deliberate attempt to create the idea and create confusion that we are not discharging our duties. We have deployed our human resource to take all steps to surveil, prevent and curb the disease. The kind of infrastructure we have to combat dengue, does not exist in any other state across India," Atin Ghosh, Member, Mayor-In-Council (Health) told the media here.

Ghosh's comments come on a day when West Bengal BJP leaders and workers staged a protest against the dengue outbreak and criticised the state government for alleged lack of infrastructure to tackle the disease which, they claimed, had led to over 1,000 deaths.

Drawing attention to the changing climate, Ghosh said the disease has affected other states across the country.

He asserted the civic body is using state-of-the-art equipment for diagnostics.

"We work under the mandate of primary healthcare. Our framework doesn't involve hospitalisation and personalised treatment. We are in-charge of detection and recommending treatment guidelines in accordance with WHO. We do dengue detection with 15 machines in 15 centres. We do NS1 Antigen testing in two days free of cost and IgM (antibody) in five days. Our reporting system is the fastest. We have catered to 10,000 people in Kolkata, which is more than what the private sector can do," he added.

The civic body is planning to procure a cell counting machine to speed up detection.

The state government had earlier said 31 people have died of dengue in the state while more than 14,500 have tested positive this year.