Ma Su addresses Dengue awareness programme at DPH

CHENNAI: Health Minister Ma Subramanian addressed an awareness programme on Dengue at the Directorate of Public Health and Preventive Medicine on Tuesday. He said that the Tamil Nadu government is taking precautions to prevent any kind of fever and outbreaks from spreading.

The health department and local bodies have been working on controlling the spread of mosquito borne diseases in Tamil Nadu by various activities like mosquito eradication, awareness programme, fever diagnosis, taking immediate preventive measures in places where fever outbreak is reported and conducting medical camps. In the last few months, the incidence of flu and Covid has been completely controlled in Tamil Nadu. The dengue cases have been low and no deaths were reported,” the health minister said.

He added that the daily fever monitoring is being done in 2,800 hospitals and health centers. All the departments are carrying out preventive measures in a coordination with the local bodies. The District-level Rapid Action Teams headed by the Primary Health Medical Officer in each district go to the affected areas and carry out disease prevention activities.

"Besides, 24/ 7 hours fever treatment centers are functioning in all government hospitals, special medical camps are conducted and mobile medical teams go to fever affected areas and provide immediate treatment. So far, 80,197 camps have been conducted under the special medical camps and 13,68,601 people have benefited, of which 14,197 people have been diagnosed with fever and are recovering well,” said Ma Subramanian.

He added that 22,000 workers in all districts are going door-to-door to identify and destroy mosquito breeding sites through fogging. Entomological survey work is being carried out in the Panchayat, Municipal and Corporation areas on a daily basis to identify mosquito breeding places.

Talking about the availability of drugs and equipment in the hospitals, he said that adequate stock of test equipment, drugs, platelets and blood is maintained in government hospitals.

“The total number of testing centers for detection of dengue fever by "ELISA" method has been increased to 125. Every day the cases of fever are uploaded online at "ihip.nhp.gov.in/idsp" along with immediate treatment and preventive measures," said the minister.