Dengue: Draining out Village basements priority for MCD

Civic workers are clocking more than 12 hours cleaning up basements in the Commonwealth Games Village where water has accumulated.

Civic workers are clocking more than 12 hours cleaning up basements in the Commonwealth Games Village where water has accumulated because of its proximity to the Yamuna to ensure the threat from dengue is under control.

The staff are now busy pumping out water from the basements in the residential towers. The basements are not in use,but officials fear the accumulated water could lead to mosquito-breeding. They have already labelled the Village site a poor selection by civic officials as it is surrounded by the Yamuna on three sides and hence vulnerable to vector-borne diseases. The number of dengue cases have currently crossed 3,000 in the city,with an average of 90 cases being reported everyday now. So far,five people have died due to dengue in the city. Work is on at a frantic pace and in a couple of days boats will be deployed to spray anti-larvae chemicals in the riverbed,said officials. The walls of the basements in at least 24 towers are being sprayed with synthetic pyrethroid to check mosquito-breeding and fortify the residential quarters against any outbreak.

The basements were filled up with the sub-soil water and now that the water is drying up,we are speeding up the work. Today,we deployed fire tenders to pump out the water and spray anti-larvae chemicals, said MCD health officer Dr V K Monga. Around 90 per cent of the work has been completed. More than 100 personnel are responsible for pumping out the water and carrying out fogging operations in the Village. As per MCD officials,there were no reports of any tourists or athletes getting dengue in the Capital.

Breeding: Govt offices in city worst hit
As per the National Vector-borne Disease Control Programme,government offices in Delhi are the worst-affected in terms of mosquito breeding as the container index in these offices far exceed the optimum level. For example,the Press Trust of India building in Central Delhi has a container index number of containers with immature stages per 100 containers with water is almost 35 per cent. The Reserve Bank of India complex has a container index of 15.5 per cent,officials said. At a meeting of the special task force on dengue,a notice was issued to government departments to take action. In the last week,a large number of cases have been reported from the Delhi Cantonment area too because of their high container index there,said civic officials. The MCD had also challaned the director of Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi for excessive breeding inside the campus from where a large number of cases had been reported.

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