Viral fever claims 193 lives in Kerala state
INDIA: India’s southern coastal Kerala state is reeling from
an outbreak of mosquito-borne Chikungunya viral fever infections that
have claimed 193 lives, a minister said Monday.
Health minister P.K. Sreemathy told AFP that the inland plantation
districts of Pathanamthitta and Kottayam were the worst affected,
accounting for 161 of the 193 deaths this year.
“We have organized 2,500 medical camps in the state. This is an
unusual situation that needs multiple strategies to defuse the crisis,”
she said.
The minister said the situation, which erupted with the arrival of
annual monsoon rains in June, was improving, citing a decline in the
number of cases reported in recent weeks.
Kerala health experts blamed abysmal efforts to clean up mosquito
breeding areas and an ineffective health system for the high number of
deaths. “The viral outbreak and Chikungunya infection reveal that public
health in the state is in danger and health management of the state is
not at all effective,” said Vinod Kumar, a doctor working with a
voluntary health group.
Chikungunya — transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito — was first
detected in 1955 in Africa and last year caused the deaths of some 200
people on the French Indian ocean island of Reunion.
Thiruvananthapuram, Tuesday, AFP |