The recent change in temperature has triggered fear among the residents of Noida about the comeback of mosquito-borne diseases.
Though the authorities claim that they are taking all the precautionary steps to check mosquito breeding at all sites, the residents say the efforts are inadequate. The residents claim that in most areas the fogging drive hasn’t been carried out even once.
The situation looks grim, say the residents, because if the authority fails to take timely steps the city will witness a high number of cases of mosquitoes borne disease like chikungunya, malaria and dengue, and other water-borne diseases.
Sunil Verma, a resident of Supertech Capetown, a high-rise in Sector 74, said that the mosquito index has already gone up during the evening hours. “It has already become very uncomfortable to sit in parks and other open areas. It’s time that Noida Authority starts its fogging drive in our sector," he added.
Listing down their efforts to control mosquito breeding, Anurag Bhargava, chief medical officer of Gautam Buddh Nagar told City Spidey that the fogging is being regularly conducted by the health department of the city. “We are also taking help from Noida Authority and using their machines to conduct fogging on a daily basis,” he added.
Bhargava said that right now they have two big fogging machines and have taken 20 fogging machines from the Noida Authority (including six big fogging machines and 14 smaller ones).
“To crackdown the spread of water-borne diseases, the health department had conducted an inspection of more than 300 houses, private hospitals, residential sectors, societies and industrial sectors,” he added.
The health department draws up a daily schedule for fogging drive based on the availability of machines. Security guards of the sectors and officials of the health department will oversee the entire process,” he added.
Meanwhile, the residents are worried that mosquito breeding sites such as open nullahs, potholes, drains and low-lying areas that are prone to waterlogging are being ignored by the authority. Usually an authority-appointed worker carries out fogging on a bicycle or rickshaw at these places, which the residents said is insufficient.
The health department officials said that ideally spray used in fogging drive should reach indoors as the vectors are born in stagnant water in coolers, air conditioners, pots, ornamental plants, fountains, water tanks, bird feeders and so on and most of these are inside the premises.
Last year, a few RWAs like those of sectors 19 and 27 had bought a hand-operated fogging machine to step up prevention efforts against the spread of chikungunya and dengue.
Rajeev Garg, RWA president of Sector-27 of Noida, said that last year fogging conducted by Noida Authority was not so effective and almost every household had a patient of mosquito-borne or water borne disease. But this year they are trying to change the trend. “We are doing fogging with our own fogging machine every day for an hour in evening,” he added.
