Health Ministers of South India to meet on July 30 to check Chikungunya epidemic

Alarming spread of Chikungunya epidemic in peninsular India will be bringing the Health Ministers of four South Indian states together in Bangalore on July 30 to exchange notes on effectively tackling the disease, which has already afflicted close to a million people.

Karnataka’s Minister for Health R Ashok told reporters that the meeting would work out a joint exercise to be carried out for large-scale fogging operations across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh to drive out the aedes aegypti mosquitoes that carry the Chikungunya virus.

The joint meeting of Health Ministers of the four south Indian states will also be a collective effort to seek the Federal Government’s guidelines and financial assistance to contain the disease.

Since it was first detected in late 2005, Karnataka alone has reported about 500,000 cases of Chikungunya while neighbouring Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu had reported about 200,000 cases each. Maharashtra has also reported about 100,000 cases, officials said.

However, Ashok said the Karnataka Government had been making tireless efforts to contain the disease, which spreading fast in rural areas of the State. Apart from allopathic medicines, the Government was also providing ayurvedic, unani and homeopathy medicine to the affected areas on demand.

Though the Government had deployed more than 850 fogging machines in areas reporting a high incidence of Chikungunya, the epidemic proportions the disease was assuming had forced the authorities to draw up a plan to provide each of the 5,400 gram panchayats in the state with a fogging machine.

With each fogging machine costing anywhere between Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000, the Government had released a sum of Rs 84 million for purchase of the machines. In a phased manner, all the 5,400 gram panchayats will be provided with the fogging machines, which also help prevent the spread of other communicable diseases like malaria.

Karnataka’s Additional Director for Health and Family Welfare Dr R Ramesh said disease is found to be rampant in areas suffering from a chronic shortage of water. “Due to lack of regular supply, water is stored in these areas for days on end, providing a fertile breeding ground for mosquitoes”, he said.

Though the disease is not considered to be fatal, the symptoms of Chikungunya include fever and pain in the bones and joints. The victims of the disease tend to develop a stooped posture as a result of the arthritic symptoms of Chikungunya, which affects limbs and bones.