Kolkata, Sep 1 (IANS) A crucial meeting chaired by West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari is scheduled at Swasthya Bhavan, the headquarters of the state health department at Salt Lake in the northern outskirts of Kolkata, later in the day to work out a strategy involving multiple government departments to combat the dengue crisis in the state.

The meeting, to be attended by some ministers and all the top bureaucrats from the health, public works department, panchayat affairs and rural development, municipal affairs and urban development and irrigation departments, will work out the blueprint of how these departments would adopt a coordinated approach to combat the current dengue crisis.

“The Chief Minister is of the opinion that although the primary task of combatting the crisis is of the state health department, the said department alone might not be able to combat the current crisis unless it works in coordination with the other four departments,” said a senior officer from the state secretariat.

Apart from the representatives from these departments, the nodal officers from 21 urban civic bodies in the state had also been asked to be present at the meeting. The meeting is scheduled to start at 5 p.m.

According to the state government official, the state municipal affairs and urban development department has already started intensifying cleanliness drives in the urban areas in Kolkata and its suburbs. “Now it has been decided that the state irrigation and panchayat affairs and rural development departments will be involved actively to undertake the same cleanliness drive in the rural areas,” the state government official added.

However, despite the involvement of so many departments, the state health department will act as the nodal department in this coordinated exercise and the entire exercise will be conducted under the direct supervision of the Chief Minister’s office.

“Precisely, that is why the crucial meeting today had been convened at Swasthya Bhavan, instead of the state secretariat of Nabanna,” the state government official said.

“The boards of almost all of the urban civic bodies in the state are non-functional now. The health workers who were involved in the work of tackling the mosquito larvae menace earlier are now working for the implementation of the Ayushman Bharat project in the state. The doctors at the health centres, who are already overburdened, are not always able to concentrate properly in this dengue-combating exercise,” the official said.

In such a situation, the Chief Minister’s personal intervention is considered significant.

The West Bengal Health Department has already identified five districts as the most dengue-prone in the state. These five districts are the state capital of Kolkata, Howrah, North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas and Murshidabad.

The continued weather unpredictability and rainfall have kept the state health department most worried, as dengue cases and dengue-related deaths have increased in certain districts.

–IANS

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