Nearly all 41 wards of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation have recorded a spike in the number of dengue infections.
According to state health department sources, the total number of dengue cases from January has crossed 2,200. About a fortnight ago, the number hovered around the 1,500 mark.
In Salt Lake and Duttabad, two persons have died due to dengue at the Bidhanagar Sub-divisional Hospital and at a private hospital.
Cluster infections are being reported on a weekly basis from places like Duttabad, Baguiati, Ashwininagar, Chinar Park as well as several Salt Lake blocks. These blocks are AE, BE, Sarat Abasan, AH, AG, EE, ED and IC among others.
In Duttabad, that comprises a series of tenements along the EM Bypass that borders Salt Lake, nearly every other house has a person down with fever, residents say.
A senior official of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation’s health department said that they had started mapping zones that were reporting a steady number of cases.
“We are colour-coding these areas with red being the areas where the highest number of cases are being reported from, orange the intermediate category while yellow is moderate,” said the official.
According to figures from the district administration’s health department, the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation has the highest number of reported dengue cases among all the urban local bodies falling under the North 24-Parganas district.
Several residents across these areas including Salt Lake said that vector control teams were rarely seen and piled-up garbage, water bodies as well as puddles had turned into mosquito-breeding sites.
In Salt Lake, piles of garbage, accumulated pools of water in under-construction sites and near stagnant canals, including the Kestopur, Bagjola and Eastern Drainage canals, provide ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
Public health experts have repeatedly stressed that the dengue-causing aedes ageypti mosquito can breed in very small pools of water and areas must be cleaned regularly to prevent freshwater collection.
“We are conducting house visits as well as checking symptoms of residents. Our teams are also spraying larvicide,” said the official.
Dengue tests are being conducted at the dozen health centres run by the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation.