Karnataka health minister Dinesh Gundu Rao.
Credit: DH File Photo
Bengaluru: Karnataka health minister Dinesh Gundu Rao on Thursday instructed district officials and zilla panchayat CEOs across the state to keep an eye out for Zika virus cases along with dengue cases in their districts.
Addressing the officials via a virtual meeting, he suggested opening fever clinics in areas seeing high dengue positive cases and directed all officials to be alert until October.
"Whoever has got fever symptoms in the vector areas should get tested for dengue," he told them. Door-to-door dengue awareness activities will continue across the state for the next two weeks.
Additionally, he asked them to be alert for any Zika virus cases.
"One suspected Zika virus case has been detected in Shivamogga, which has not been confirmed yet. Even if it is not that alarming, we need to be alert," he said.
All the officials have been instructed to ensure the revised dengue test rates for private healthcare facilities are being adhered to across the state. Harsh Gupta, principal secretary, health and family welfare department, warned that action would be taken against defaulters based on patient complaints.
ARTPARK's dengue dashboard
Launched last September, ARTPARK's AI-powered dengue dashboard has been providing four-week-ahead predictions every week to all district health officers and administrative offices across the state.
Dr Bhaskar Rajakumar, director, health initiatives, ARTPARK, told DH that they are now also planning to expand the larval survey application used by ASHA workers in Bengaluru to identify breeding spots to all other districts. "We are also looking at building a community application with the Bengaluru Science and Technology (BeST) cluster and engaging school students to spread awareness about dengue," he said.
Source reduction activity in Bengaluru
From June 28 to July 3, the BBMP has surveyed over 7.66 lakh homes within its limits and found 15,002 homes positive for dengue larvae. Additionally, 1,473 teams deployed across the eight zones have found dengue larvae in 26,259 containers out of the 23,05,766 containers surveyed so far.