In Kerala, Ramadoss invites VS ire

Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramdoss today reiterated here that the 89 chikungunya patients who have died so far in Kerala may have been killed by other underlying conditions

Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramdoss today reiterated here that the 89 chikungunya patients who have died so far in Kerala may have been killed by other underlying conditions, triggering protests from both the ruling front and the Opposition in the state.

8220;Chikungunya by itself can8217;t kill. That8217;s the expert opinion. I expect to get the report of the NICD-WHO-NIV team looking into this here within three to four days, and this would be clear,8221; Ramadoss asserted. The Central team accompanying Ramadoss said about 70 per cent of the victims so far were aged above 60 years, and the primary cause of death may have been their pre-existing conditions like myocardial infraction, TB, cancer or others, which could have got compounded by chikungunya.

An angry Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan, whose government has begun forking out Rs 25,000 each to kin of those killed by the epidemic, retorted that he stood by his convictions that the deaths were caused by the blight alone. 8220;If not, those making such statements should prove what else is killing so many,8221; he said. The Congress-led UDF in the Opposition denounced Ramadoss8217; claim as 8220;totally unacceptable8221;, while senior UDF leader KM Mani slammed the minister for talking out before any scientific study on this aspect had been completed.

Caught between the two sides, state health minister PK Sreemathy, who had earlier stated that no one had died of chikungunya in Kerala before the Chief Minister bluntly overruled her, declined to say if the state Health Department would now go by the Central minister8217;s stance.

The Kerala branch of the Indian Medical Association IMA, meanwhile, urged the government to conduct postmortems to ascertain the causes of death. IMA leaders slammed the government for reacting late to the threat, and maintained that things would not have reached a crisis if there was some coordination between the various government departments.

Ramadoss and his team went through worst affected Cherthala, and nearby Thurayoor and Alapuzha. Even as the minister took rounds of the hospital wards, often squatting to chat up with patients lying on overcrowded hospital floors, yet another chikungunya patient died at the Cherthala Taluk hospital.

Ramadoss later said the Centre would provide a special package to Kerala to fight the epidemic, which would soon be worked out. He said the Centre was willing to provide all equipment, including mosquito nets, fogging machines, and larvicides.

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He said the Centre would also provide necessary equipment for the derelict Virology Institute in Alapuzha to resume work. Ramadoss observed that another key institution in an epidemic scenario, a Vector Control Research Unit that the Centre had set up in Kerala some years ago has not been functioning either. The Centre would now take this back from the state and upgrade it. The epidemic, Ramadoss said, was primarily a sanitation and hygiene issue and secondarily a medical issue, and can only be combated effectively through a multi-pronged approach with total community participation.