Dengue off to fatal run in south Kolkata danger zone

KOLKATA: It took the death of a 21-year-old girl for the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) to go hard at dengue in Lotus Park, an area close to the Bijoygarh-Golf Green-Baghajatin belt where dengue had wreaked havoc last year.

After Mou Mukherjee died of dengue at MR Bangur Hospital on Saturday, the KMC vector-control team from Borough X conducted this season’s first major anti-dengue drive at Lotus Park on Sunday morning.On Monday morning, a separate civic team went to Lotus Park and found an abandoned plot — littered with garbage — that has become a potential breeding ground for Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. The civic workers pasted a poster on the adjacent wall of the plot, asking the owner to clean the area, after they failed to find him.

“I have not seen any kind of preventive activities in our locality on part of the KMC health department for past several months. Had they become active earlier, I would not have lost my only daughter,” rued Tarak Mukherjee, Mou’s father.
Rathin De, a neighbour, said he was shaken to watch a girl of that age succumb to dengue helplessly, without giving the scope for proper treatment. “I am really worried over the return of dengue in the locality. Last year, dengue mayhem continued till early November and now with several residents suffering from fever, we are keeping our fingers crossed,” De, a resident of Lotus Park, said.
Staying closer to Lotus Park, Sudipa Sen, a resident of Pallisree, recalled how a 10-year old boy, a Class V student of South Point, had died of dengue last year. “Going by the loss of lives caused by the dreaded disease in the Bijoygarh-Baghajatin belt, the civic body should have been proactive in its fight against dengue,” Sen said. Sources in the KMC health department (Borough X) conceded that the dengue situation in Bijoygarh-Golf Green-Baghajatin was under scanner.
Memories of last year are also stalking resident of the KIT housing complex close to Ballygunge railway station. Last year, 12-year-old Dwip and his father Siddhartha Ghosh died of dengue on the same day (September 7). Biva Ghosh, the only surviving member of the family, is yet to recover from the shock. Gopal Gharami, Dwip’s material uncle, expressed concern over the condition of the playground inside the housing complex. “Here, water is being allowed to stagnate. With at least six people suffering from fever in our complex and reports of people testing positive for dengue pouring in from the adjacent Uttarpara locality, we are keeping our fingers crossed,” he said. According to a KMC health department official, there were reasons for residents of Ballygunge-Kasba belt to feel insecure as dengue is poised to take a leap at this time of the year.