Dengue cases go up 8 times, cholera 7 in 5 years: Report

According to the report, every year, at least 6,688 people die due to tuberculosis and 1,18,093 suffer from diarrhoea.

Dengue cases have gone up eight times and cholera cases seven times in the past five years, a white paper released by the Praja Foundation on Thursday revealed. It further shows that around 19 fatalities of tuberculosis were reported every day in the city over the same period.

According to the report, every year, at least 6,688 people die due to tuberculosis and 1,18,093 suffer from diarrhoea. The total number of dengue deaths has gone up from 62 in 2011 to 124 in 2015. The verbal autopsy report of the BMC had reported that 7,090 people died of tuberculosis in 2014, while its TB control unit reported 1,351 fatalities. In the past five years, 33,442 people have died due to tuberculosis.

In 2015, the BMC conducted the Verbal Autopsy study in tuberculosis deaths. “The study seems like a half-hearted effort as no criteria was set for sampling, questionnaire and methodology. However, the report does note that the BMC has registered 7,090 deaths due to TB in 2014, while its TB control unit has a record of only 1,351 deaths. This anomaly needs to be explained by the public health department,” said Nitai Mehta, managing trustee of Praja Foundation.

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Milind Mhaske, project director of Praja Foundation, said their current year’s survey of 25,215 households in the city shows that nine per cent of the annual family income of Socio Economic Classification (SEC D and E) is spent on hospital or medical cost. “Overall, around eight per cent people spend on medical and hospital costs and 47 of 1,000 households use private or charitable clinics or hospitals. Does that mean government hospitals are not reliable?” asked Mhaske.

The BMC spends at least Rs 218 crore every year on health. “For more authenticity, the data of cause of death needs to be refined through tools like Verbal Autopsy (VA). If the authorities are really serious about controlling, eradicating TB and other diseases, we urgently need to acknowledge the real problem to find out solutions. Further, we need to augment our HMIS (Health Management Information System) and HSS (Health Surveillance System) to give critical feedback to strengthen our programmes,” said Mehta.

The report also shows that four councillors who have been members of the Public Health Committee never asked a single question on health in 2015-16.

Four MLAs have also not asked a single question in two sessions (winter 2014 and budget 2015).

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