Kolkata Municipal Corporation has blamed some digital healthcare platforms that conduct dengue tests for the delay in vector-control work in some instances because the platforms allegedly do not inform the civic body about the positive tests in their laboratories.
While hospitals and diagnostic centres that have been in the business for years have come to know over many meetings with the government that they must inform the civic bodies the addresses of the people testing positive for dengue, many of the new-age digital platforms may not be aware of the requirement, KMC officials said.
“Some of them do not inform us about the patients testing positive in their labs,” said an official.
The unavailability of information means the KMC is clueless about pockets where dengue infections are on the rise, the officials said, resulting in delay in sending vector-control workers to locate and destroy mosquito-breeding sites in those places.
Public health experts, however, point out that the KMC is supposed to undertake anti-mosquito drive in regular intervals throughout the year.
“Vector-control activities and awareness campaigns throughout the year will not allow people to forget what is to be done to prevent mosquito breeding. The authorities have to create and publicise a reporting mechanism so common people could report about mosquito-breeding sites whenever they spot any,” Shanta Ghatak, a former medical consultant with the World Health Organization (WHO), recently told The Telegraph.
Many Kolkatans have said vector-control teams visit their neighbourhoods too infrequently. Timely information about places from where people are testing positive should help the civic body schedule a more effective vector-control drive.
“A woman died of dengue earlier this month. We did not get any information about her after she tested positive. Later, we found that she gave blood samples to a digital platform. They did not intimate us about the case,” said Atin Ghosh, deputy mayor of Kolkata and the head of the civic health department.
The KMC raised the issue with the state health department, which in turn wrote to many such platforms about the need to inform the government about all patients who are testing positive for dengue and malaria in their laboratories.
Siddhartha Niyogi, director of state health services, said: “We have collected the addresses of the digital platforms from the records available with the health department and have written to them that they must inform the government about all people testing positive for dengue and malaria.”
A KMC official said: “When we tried to look for the addresses of these platforms, we found that at least one had their office in New Town. Since New Town is outside the Kolkata municipal area, they may not have taken our instruction on reporting cases seriously. So we approached the health department.”