Delhi's dedication proves death knell for dengue

New Delhi: The capital city of India, New Delhi, is heaving a sigh of relief post this monsoon period , thanks to a committed government's dedicated efforts and cooperation of the citizens.

Together, the rulers and the ruled have proved that sustained action would provide positive results in any area of governance. The fight against dengue in Delhi is one such.

The national capital used to witness not less than 20,000 dengue cases on an average (reported cases only) each year.

When the AAP government woke up to the reality a couple of years ago that it needed a coordinated action, it launched a two-front attack against dengue.

The first Mohalla clinic of Delhi was inaugurated on July 19, 2015 at Peeragarhi area of West Delhi. It took another 9 months to set up additional 100 clinics.

By December 2016, a total of 106 clinics were established across all 11 districts and in 55 of total 70 assembly constituencies of the state.

The Government of Delhi had planned to launch 1000 such clinics However, despite high political ownership and huge demand from the community, nearly 10% of the target numbers of these clinics could be established by the target timeline of December 2016.

The delay in setting up of planned numbers of clinics has been attributed to factors, including insufficient advance planning (there was no operational plan developed till 1 year in the implementation), difficulty in selection of the sites (the land is not controlled by the state government), delay in approvals of proposals at various levels, and frequent change in technical leadership in health department among other.

Majority of the clinics had been started in the early 2016 and became popular among the community, soon thereafter. An official release from the Government of Delhi reported that by July 2016, nearly 800,000 people had availed health services & 43,000 pathological tests were conducted in 5 months.

Every clinic on average was catering to 70–100 patients per working day. In September–October 2016, when Delhi witnessed an outbreak of dengue and Chikungunya diseases and the health facilities were flooded with the patient, the Mohalla clinics became a key entry point for patients to get examined and laboratory test for dengue done. This was considered a major relief for large health facilities and allayed the crisis in the city.

By the end of the year 2016, around 1.5 million patients were examined at these facilities, most of which were functioning for less than a year till then.

This year hardly 2,000 cases have been reported. Chikungunya cases are nominal this year and viral fevers too have come down. In addition, now there is a new campaign launched by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal called "10 weeks, 10 am, 10 minutes" which asks people to inspect their households to prevent mosquito breeding grounds. People do it happily.

Here is something which the Telangana government too can perhaps emulate. Every 'gully' of Delhi gets garbage collection vans with an audio system that keep reminding people of the importance of the fight against mosquitoes every morning.

The Telangana government which is under attack from the Opposition should introspect as to why it failed in implementing the Mohalla clinics scheme despite several tours by the GHMC political leadership to Delhi. or in adopting awareness campaigns.