With areas under its jurisdiction registering a high number of dengue cases, North MCD today decided to set up four centres for testing patients for the deadly disease.
The decision to start four more dengue test centres in four different zones of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) was taken during a meeting of its standing committee.
Chairman of the standing committee, Mohan Bhardwaj, directed the MCD Commissioner to set up the dengue test centres to supplement the test facilities at Kasturba and Hindu Rao hospitals within the NDMC area.
The dengue tests were available at the two hospitals through ELISA test kit which were supplied by the National Institute of Virology, Pune.
Availability of the prescribed test kits poses a major challenge vis-a-vis the opening of new test centres, said Dr AK Seth, Health Director of North MCD. But the chairman, however, directed MCD Commissioner PK Gupta to procure the test kits from private sources.
The standing committee also decided to provide health kits, including face masks and gloves to the staff involved in extensive fumigation exercise to check the breeding of dengue mosquitoes. Committee member Rajesh Bhatia raised the issue saying that chemicals used for fumigation were harmful for the staff who were exposed to it for long hours.
Meanwhile, committee member and leader of opposition Mukesh Goel slammed the mayor of North MCD and accused him of "indulging in drama" instead of focusing on serious efforts to check the dengue menace.
The 12-member committee hotly debated the issue with opposition members, including Goel, Prithvi Singh Rathor and Rajesh Kumar, charging that it was for "publicity's sake" that the North MCD mayor had gone in person to Delhi Chief Minister Kejriwal's residence on a mosquito-control visit.
The chairman, however, pacified the warring members and urged them to refrain from politics over the sensitive issue.
He said that the North MCD campaign for checking mosquito breeding was started without any political consideration in view of the severity of the incidence of dengue.
MCD officials present during the meeting said that nearly 350 staffers have been pressed into the mosquito-control drive and about 3.45 lakh households have been covered under the fumigation campaign.
