malaria cases on the decline: Aldona PHC

PORVORIM, JAN 26
There has been substantial reduction in Malaria cases in the villages that come under the jurisdiction of Aldona Primary Health Centre during the year 2010.
The Aldona Primary Health Centre has reported 170 Malaria cases during the last year, out of which 25 cases are of Falciparum and 145 cases are of Vivax.
It may be recalled that in 2009, Aldona Public Health Centre had detected 444 cases of malaria, out of which 91 were Falciparum and 353 Vivax.
However, these figures do not account for the Malaria cases detected by the private Pathological laboratories or treated by private physicians.
Speaking to Herald, Aldona Primary Health Center Health Officer Dr Pradeep Dhavjekar said out of the 170 Malaria cases detected in 2010, 159 were labourers and only 11 were locals.
“We detected more cases in Socorro, Salvador-do-Mundo and Penha-de-Franca,” informed Dr Dhavjekar.
Dr P Dhavjekar said there has been reduction in malaria cases due to various measures adopted by the Health Centre like regular screening of labourers, anti-larval measures like fogging of the areas where incidence of malaria was found high, spraying of abate medicines, malarial awareness drives, issuing notices to the contractors and builders who are not issuing health cards to their labourers and observing the rules of Health Department.
“We have penalized numerous contractors for violating the health rules and have collected fines to the tune of Rs 24,350 during 2010. We issued 4,574 health cards to the labourers and renewed 1,712 cards,” informed Dr Dhavjekar.
“The surveillance team of Malaria Clinic at Porvorim visited house-to-house to collect the blood samples of the general public having fever. As stagnant water provides a breeding ground for mosquitoes, Malaria Clinic also engaged workers for spraying abate medicines in the areas where water gets stagnated,” added Dr Dhavjeker.
Dr Dhavjekar further informed that eight cases of Dengue and 31 cases of Chikungunya were also detected in 2010.
“Dengue and Chikungunya cases were detected in Aldona, Bastora, Ekoshi, Pomburpa, Salai and Brittona villages,” said Dr Dhavjekar.