1,400 high-risk zones leave lakhs facing disease threat

HYDERABAD: The state government has identified 1,414 highrisk zones prone to seasonal and communicable diseases like malaria, chikungunya, dengue in Telangana where a 54-lakh population resides.
While most of these hot spots are located in the agency areas, several hot-spots in Greater Hyderabad too figure in the list. Of the total 1,414 zones, as many as 36 are municipalities and remaining are rural and mostly tribal areas.
Medical and health department officials have launched rapid diagnostic test campaign in these areas.“These hot spots have been identified based on cases reported last year and diagnosis tests being conducted this calendar year so far. Over 3.30 lakh kits for collecting several lakh blood samples to test malaria, dengue, chikungunya have already been distributed among field staff. While Greater Hyderabad and Karimnagar figure among list of maximum number of dengue cases, Khammam heads the number of malaria cases. Though chikungunya cases have been reported, they are negligible,“ medical and health additional director Prabhavathi told TOI.
Officials said every year, they identify high risk areas and supply adequate medicine stocks to primary health centres. Artemesinin tablets and other medicines have already been supplied in adequate numbers to the 358 primary health centres catering to the hot spots, in addition to deployment of thousands of field staff.
Health minister C Lakshma Reddy said the department officials already observed June as “anti-malaria month“ in tribal areas and that anti-larval operations have been taken up in a big way in towns (municipalities and Greater Hyderabad) to combat the mosquitoes. Asha workers are also being trained to check cases of malaria in tribal areas, he added.