Subhashis Gangopadhyay, advisor to the Union finance minister and a former health administrator in the Central government, slammed the West Bengal Health department for its failure to prevent the outbreak of vector-borne diseases in the state. He also rapped the health units of urban local bodies and the state government for suppressing cases and deaths in the initial stage, leading to the major outbreak.“Suppressed figures keep people misinformed and less aware,” Gangopadhyay said at a health economic summit organised by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industries on Saturday. State Health Minister Surya Kanta Mishra also attended the event. “Malaria patients are treated in the state-run hospitals and a lot of money is wasted in procuring kits to test blood samples. Instead, the state government should have invested on research to provide a malaria and dengue-free city,” said Gangopadhyay. He added: “Research proposals are gathering dust. Instead of waiting for an outbreak and then try to control it, malaria has to be prevented in a metropolitan city.” He further said: “If the cases were tracked and monitored properly by the Health department, the diseases would not have spread to such an extent.” Mishra, however, said: “Although the affected cases have increased considerably, the situation cannot be termed as an epidemic. We are trying to combat it. More coordination is needed between the state health department, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) and the state-run hospitals.”Significantly, even as the minister emphasised on strengthening coordination among various bodies working to combat the diseases, figures of the affected cases in the city recorded by the state Health department and by the KMC never tally. Civic officials claim that the state-run hospitals and private nursing homes do not share their findings with the KMC. Subodh Dey, MMiC ( health), said: “We have asked the state-run hospitals and private nursing homes several times to send their data to us but they never complied with. Since we have no authority to take any penal action, we cannot force them to share their records with us.” CMHO gheraoed for ‘reporting’ to BoseMembers of the Indian Trade Union Congress (INTUC) gheraoed the Chief Municipal Health Officer (CMHO), Deb Dwaipayan Chattopadhyay, outside his chamber on Saturday. Chattopadhyay had sparked off a controversy by visiting the CPM headquarters at the Alimuddin Street on Wednesday. INTUC leaders claim since the CMHO is a government official, he should not visit office of a political party to brief party leaders about the vector-borne diseases in the city. “This is unethical that a senior government official reported to the Left Front chairman. We will raise the issue in the next session of the KMC,” said Subrata Mukherjee, president, INTUC. The CMHO admitted that he should not have paid the visit and said he had merely accompanied MMiC (health) Subodh Dey, who had been called by Biman Bose. “I took the CMHO since I do not have all the data. Bose called us to know the status of the vector-borne diseases in the city,” said Dey.
