High Court unhappy with Telangana departmental report on dengue

Source: newindianexpress.com

HYDERABAD: A division bench of the Telangana High Court on Thursday termed the reports filed by the authorities of the State medical and health department and GHMC on tackling dengue and other vector-borne diseases as ‘vague and inadequate’. The court directed the State government to submit a fresh report informing it of the hospitals’ plan of action to curtail the spread of dengue in the coming months. 

The bench, prima facie, found that the logistics of the government were not proportionate to the magnitude of the problem on hand. Further, it directed the government to take immediate steps for providing extra beds and other requisite facilities in all the government hospitals and sought details about the functioning of private hospitals. 

The bench was passing this order on Wednesday in relation to a PIL filed by Dr M Karuna complaining of inaction by authorities concerned in taking preventive steps against dengue in the State, and in a PIL that was taken up suo motu based on a letter addressed to the High Court chief justice by advocate Rapolu Bhaskar who pointed out lacunae in government hospitals.

Senior counsel S Niranjan Reddy, amicus curiae in the case, told the court that a majority of dengue cases would be reported between September and December as per last year’s trends. “A patient may die due to organ failure because of dengue. In such a case, the cause of death would be dengue, and not organ failure,” he said while disagreeing with the government’s claim that no one had died of dengue this year. 
‘Adequate steps not taken’

Pursuant to an earlier direction of the court, State Advocate General BS Prasad submitted reports before it saying that the government had taken adequate steps to treat the dengue-affected patients in the State.
After perusing the reports, the bench expressed displeasure with the contents mentioned in the report and pointed out that there cannot be 1,130 cases in a week’s time if adequate steps were taken by the government. There is a need to address the infrastructural inadequacies to tackle the menace effectively, the bench said and directed the government to submit a fresh report.

The bench also asked the State to inform it of the plan of action to curtail the spread of dengue in the coming months — before the conclusion of the monsoon season. Later, it posted the matter to September 20.