By Md. Ali, TwoCircles.net,
New Delhi: Because of around a dozen suspected dengue deaths in Jamia Nagar, there is an unprecedented amount of panic, scare and anger among the local residents these days. Even simple viral fever is being misunderstood as dengue.
On Friday, 13th of August itself, two suspect dengue deaths were reported from Jamia Nagar — Vinod Kumar from Nai Basti and Shabana from Batla House died at the Holy Family Hospital on Friday,.
According to MCD health officials, two suspected and one confirmed dengue deaths have occurred so far. On 13th of August itself, 20 fresh cases were reported, taking the total number to 194. Residents of Jamia Nagar claim the death figure due to the disease to be around a dozen, but the MCD rejects the projection as “exaggeration.”
Mirhan Athar of Jamia Nagar and a second year engineering student at Aligarh Muslim University was among the first ones to be claimed by the disease. He died on 26th of July.
While MCD officials claim of doing whatever they can to contain the increasing disease, local residents at Jamia Nagar blame the civic bodies’ negligence for the spread of the disease.
The only government hospital in the vicinity, Holy Family has been a complete failure in tackling what the public of Jamia Nagar sees as no less than an “emergency.” Importantly diagnosed with dengue Mirhan Athar was first taken to the hospital but was turned away as it didn’t have any space in its intensive care unit.
According to the MCD officials, Jamia Nagar is very vulnerable to the spread of dengue because Yamuna River flows right across the colony. Then, construction being going on massive scale in different parts of Jamia Nagar, has led to several breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
Now after two deaths, the MCD has trained its guns on the area with fogging machines working over time in order to prevent further spread of the disease. Besides, the civic agency is also organizing nukkad nataks and awareness campaigns in order to educate the public about dengue.
Ironically the people who are responsible for the situation to come to such a pass and who should have done some thing about it are playing politics and blame game. The local MLA, Asif Mohammad Khan, who is more famous for his provocative speeches than ground level work, blamed the MCD. On the other hand Amanatullah Khan, the local Congress leader considered, the local MLA to be equally responsible for this situation.