Kathmandu, Sept 18: Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Health and Population Upendra Yadav said on Wednesday that there was no situation for announcing the state of emergency for dengue epidemic in the country.
Giving his statement of public importance in today's session of the House of Representatives, Yadav said that the government was capable of controlling the epidemic and there seemed no ground for declaring emergency. He informed the House that lately the number of dengue patients was falling. As he said, the first case of dengue was reported in Chitwan 15 years ago and now it had spread to 56 districts.
"Over 5,000 people have been affected by dengue, six have died of it and the disease emerging as a health challenge worldwide is majorly caused by unsystematic urbanization," he said.
According to information shared by the minister, there is a significant progress on the control of other mosquito-borne diseases such as Japanese Encephalitis. Japanese Encephalitis is on the verge of elimination phase and malaria-caused death has come down to zero.
Stating that public awareness campaign against dengue was going on at all three-level governments together with search and destroy efforts and dengue test kits had been dispensed to 11 affected districts, he said Dharan, Itahari, Biratnagar and Pokhara, the most affected areas saw the operation of a special sanitation campaign.
A help desk for dengue has been set up, arrangements for free blood test of those complaining of fever are in place, 20 beds in Teku Hospital have been reserved for dengue affected and awareness campaign has been launched in schools, according to the minister.
In the meeting, lawmaker Devendra Raj Kandel asked the minister why not to declare the state of emergency when the disease had already spread to 56 districts.
Sujata Pariyar, Khagaraj Adhikari, Ram Bahadur Bista, Dilendra Prasad Badu, Amanlal Modi, Pushpa Bhusal, Prem Suwal, Parbata DC Chaudhary, Dev Prasad Timilsina, Meena Subba, Jeevan Ram Shrestha, Birodh Khatiwada , Krishna Gopal Shrestha, Rajendra Kumar KC and Nabina Lama drew the government's attention to dengue epidemic in the country.