In a first, Jaigaon Development Authority included in dengue action plan

Kolkata: In a first, this year, the state Municipal Affairs department has included Jaigaon Development Authority (JDA) which is not an urban local body in its dengue action plan.

The move comes as the area that shares its border with Bhutan have witnessed a reasonable number of

dengue cases for the last two years. JDA , the nodal agency for the development of areas under three gram panchayats of Kalchini block in Jalpaiguri was created by upgradation of Jaigaon Planning Authority in the year 1990. The department has also come up with a major

drainage project at Jaigaon which will be able to address the water logging problem in Jaigaon with water flowing down from the hilly areas of Bhutan. Accumulating water encourages the breeding of dengue mosquitoes.

"This has been a historical problem in the area. But with the completion of the drainage project we will be boring fruits from this year," a senior official of the department said.

"We have already fielded 6,387 vector control teams in all 125 ULBs and JDA.

43 of these ULB's including JDA

have been marked as vulnerable with high number of

dengue cases for the last two years," said an official of

Urban Development & Municipal Affairs department.

The department has also formed 15,582 house to house team for awareness and data collection who will start work very soon. "There will be one vector control team associated with every three house to house team for the vulnerable ULBs while for the 83 remaining ULBs there will be two vector control teams for every ward," the official added.

A number of municipalities in close proximity to the city are among the vulnerable list of the department. These include- Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation,

South Dum Dum, North

Dum Dum, Bhatpara, Rajpur- Sonarpur, Kamarhati to name a few. State Urban Development Agency (SUDA) will soon develop a web application for having data on real time basis from the field visit of the vector control teams.

However, this year the procurement of biolarvaecide and larvicide to be spread for dengue prevention has been

done through the state

Health department. It has already been sent to the Chief Medical Officer of Health of all the districts.

Meanwhile, the municipalities have been asked to collect things as per their need from the respective CMOH and spreading work has already started.