Centre presses in 3 health teams to prevent epidemics In an attempt to control outbreak of water- and food-borne diseases in flood-ravaged Uttarakhand,the health ministry has sent three public health teams to the state and kept eight additional teams on standby,ready to move at short notice. A high-level team will leave on Wednesday to review the public health measures. District units of Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme,under the National Rural Health Mission,are conducting health surveillance in all the affected districts. After picking early warning signals,diarrhoea cases in Haridwar,Uttarkashi and Rudraprayag have been managed at initial stage. No outbreak of water-,food- and air-borne or direct contact diseases has been reported from the affected areas. A specialist from National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme has been placed with the state government to provide assistance on matters pertaining to vector-borne diseases. BSNL sets right 44 of 75 exchanges across state The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited on Tuesday claimed that it has restored telephone services in most parts of Uttarakhand. Of the 270 BSNL mobile towers,we have not been able to restore services in four areas that were completely washed away. These include Kedarnath,Almora,Darchura and Narayan Bazar, said Rakesh Upadhyay,CMD,BSNL. The restoration work began on June 19 and the BSNL has restored 44 of the 75 telephone exchanges. The special service to track the last location of stranded and missing survivors in the state has so far received request from 1,250 people. We take an hour to track the last location. So far we have been able to text details to 949 people, the CMD said. He said tracking those missing through their mobile phones was difficult but not impossible. The remaining mobile towers and telephone exchanges would be fixed once the flood-hit towns are rehabilitated,he said.
