Chandigarh, 30 June:Sh Madan Mohan Mittal, Health & Family Welfare Minister, Punjab here today said that July month would be celebrated as Anti-Dengue month across the state and asked the Health Department officers to step up awareness activities to educate people regarding the preventive measures to protect themselves from these diseases. He informed that the number of cases of Malaria during the year 2012 (till May) has been less than the number of cases of Malaria (upto May) 2011, whereas only 9 cases of dengue had been reported till June 2012 as compared to 51 cases of dengue last year till June. Neither any cases of other vector borne disease viz. Chikungunya, Japanese Encephalitis, Kala Azar and Lymphatic Filariasis have been reported. He was here to chair a high level conference of Civil Surgeons of the state at Chandigarh on Saturday. The Health Minister also discussed various outbreaks of Water borne diseases reported from Ghanaur, Madanpur (Patiala District), Chamkaur Sahib (Ropar), Hoshiarpur, Fatehpur Sialwa, Barauli, Tiwana (Ajitgarh District) recently. He appreciated the prompt response by the district officials in identifying and controlling these outbreaks. He prodded that proper contact with the district administration as well stakeholder departments like Panchayat and Rural Development, Water Supply & Sanitation, Local Bodies, Municipal Committees etc to make sure rectification of underline factors and ensuring supply of potable water through these departments for prevention of such outbreaks. Mittal was apprised by officers that though no new cases of H1N1 (Swine Flu) were being reported in the state at the moment; however the department was fully prepared to meet any adverse situation.
Ms Vini Mahajan, Principal Secretary, Health; Sh Raj Kamal Chowdhry, Secretary, Health, Smt. Raji P. Shrivastava, MD, Punjab Health Systems Corporation, Sh S.K. Sharma, Mission Director, NRHM, Punjab, Dr J.P. Singh, Director Health & Family Welfare, Punjab and Dr Karanjit Singh, Director Family Welfare, Punjab were present during the conference.
The Health Minister directed the senior officers of Health Department to hold frequent meetings with heads of other concerned departments for better coordination of control of Dengue and Malaria. He asked the health department to remain vigilant and geared up to tackle any possible outbreaks of the water-borne and vector borne diseases like Diarrhoea, Malaria, Dengue etc especially in view of the oncoming monsoon season. He asked the officers of the health department to issue fresh communications to Deputy Commissioners of all the districts of Punjab asking them to take appropriate measures at their level in coordination with all the concerned departments and ensure that meetings of the District level monitoring committees are conducted at regular intervals under their chairpersonship. He made an appeal to the various sections of the society including the social and religious heads of the state urging them to sensitize people to follow the preventive measures and other instructions and guidelines issued by the state health department to guard themselves against these diseases. He said that there was no need to panic, during any such outbreak as all Government hospitals in the state were fully equipped to tackle such an eventuality. The department has specially provided Blood component Separators in all 20 district level hospitals and 6 Aphresis machines at Civil Hospital Amritsar, Bathinda, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Sangrur and Mohali for effective management of such cases.
Ms. Vini Mahajan while reviewing the overall performance of the department and progress under other important National programmes like National Rural Health Mission, AIDS Control, Revised National TB Control Programme, PNDT (Sex-Ratio), Immunization etc, asked the Civil Surgeons to play a proactive role in providing better health care services to the people of the state. Dr J.P. Singh discussed and reviewed various performance indicators of different districts and individual achievements of benchmarks by the doctors.
