The Kolkata Municipal Corporation is sending letters to residents' welfare associations of housing complexes across the city, urging them to take measures against mosquito breeding.
There are about 1,600 housing complexes in the city.
Deputy mayor Atin Ghosh said on Friday that he had written such letters to more than 900 housing complexes across Calcutta and will send letters to the rest soon.
Infection data from previous years showed that relatively more dengue cases were reported from affluent areas, Ghosh said.
Flower pots, refrigerator trays and small containers are potential
breeding sites for the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the primary transmitter of the dengue virus.
“We have reports of 204 dengue cases in the city between January 1 and July 28. The number of malaria cases reported during the same period was 1,093,” Ghosh, who also heads the health department of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, said on Friday.
Health workers of the KMC are often denied entry into housing complexes. This was one of the reasons that Ghosh said prompted him to write to the residents' welfare associations. The letter, signed by Ghosh, appeals to the associations to cooperate with the civic body's vector-control teams. Some of the other points mentioned in the letter were:
- Weekly change of water in flower vases
- Weekly inspection of earthen flower pots
- Weekly removal of water from trays in refrigerators
- Regular cleaning of rainwater pipes
- Preventing rainwater accumulation on terraces
The letter said it is not possible for the KMC alone to combat dengue and sought “active community participation”.
Ghosh said the civic authorities are focussing on destroying the sources of mosquito breeding and its teams are regularly visiting vacant plots and other places which people often treat as waste dumping sites.
The civic body is also conducting awareness campaigns from autorickshaws in each of the 144 wards twice a week.
A meeting between various state and central departments will be held on August 8 for better coordination in combating vector-borne diseases. Mayor Firhad Hakim will chair the meeting.
