Asia-Pacific Daily Report

The people in India's western state of Maharashtra have continually been suffering from malaria since the beginning of the year, and as of June 10, 2010, the state's Public Health Minister, Suresh Shetty said at least 22,159 cases had been recorded, the Daily News and Analysis (DNA) reported on Saturday (July 17). Of those cases, 12,393 were detected in Mumbai, the state capital, which is now being called the malaria capital of the state by their government. Compared to last season, IBN said that Mumbai recorded a 22 percent spike in malaria infections. NDTV on Thursday (July 22) reported that in the last two weeks, nearly 9,000 cases of malaria have been reported in Mumbai, which is the highest in four years. Although no death toll has been confirmed, IBN did report at least 11 deaths this season. While the lack of public awareness on the disease is a common cause of increases in malarial cases, these current outbreaks are being mostly attributed to construction work contractors failing to follow the norms, specifically explained by the civic body to prevent and contain the mosquito-borne illness. The civic norms made it compulsory for them to carry out anti-larvae treatment at their construction site. According to Shetty, only two percent of construction work contractors, which is about 37 of the 2,438 developers, abided by the instructions laid down to them by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). The majority of cases have been observed in Central Mumbai, where more than 100 construction projects are being developed. Because construction sites and slums contain water tanks and stagnant puddles of water, which are ideal mosquito breeding grounds, these areas are considered high-risk malaria zones, DNA reported. NDTV quoted Dr Girish Ambe, Executive Health Officer, BMC, as saying, "Since we do not want to put the lives of Mumbaikers at risk, we have started carrying out these activities ourselves, as we will recover the expenses from them." Seeing that the situation could become much worse, Shiv Sena, leader in the BMC Sunil Prabhu, brought up the issue and emphasized the dire need for prevention measures during a special general body meeting on Tuesday (July 20). Municipal commission Manisha Mhaiskar said they worked out a six-step action plan during the meeting to eradicate malaria, and was quoted as saying, 'Our first step is to stop the breeding of mosquitoes. For this, a retired doctor from the state government health department has been hired as a consultant." Prabhu told DNA that vector borne illness epidemics were at an all time high in Mumbai, suggesting that other mosquito-borne diseases, such as chikungunya, Japanese encephalitis and dengue fever were also possible threats. Already, IBN reported that Mumbai has recorded 338 cases of H1N1 flu with dengue fever, gastroenteritis and leptospirosis during this rainy season.

Source:

· http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_malaria-cases-on-rise-in-mumbai-bmc-blames...

· http://ibnlive.in.com/news/9000-malaria-cases-reported-in-mumbai/127364-17.html

· http://www.ndtv.com/article/cities/malaria-in-mumbai-over-8-000-cases-in-14-days...

· http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_biting-reality-mumbai-is-new-malaria-capit...

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