The national health team visiting the city in the wake of the spread of dengue in the district blamed it on the failure of the authorities to reduce the source of Aedes aegypti mosquito in the initial stages when the disease was setting in.

Giving details about the observations made so far during the visit, Dr Kalpana Barua, deputy director of the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme, said fogging alone could not be taken as the only solution to contain the disease.

Speaking to Newsline, the expert in vector-borne diseases said: “Fogging is conducted on the roads while mosquitoes breed in areas in and around human habitats. And notably, the mosquito develops in small water containers and therefore the lack of awareness among the people is also to blame. Besides, the source of the mosquito may develop even a few days after fogging.”

Dr Barua added that the authorities could not effectively put in place the disease management expertise in ‘source reduction’. “The Municipal Corporation has minimal staff of four inspectors and 20-odd other workers to cover such a large city,” observed Dr Barua, who visited the Dayanand Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) on Tuesday. The hospital has registered the maximum number of patients (nearly 2,000) so far.

Headed by Dr Barua, the national health team is on a three to four-day visit to Ludhiana and has been visiting various areas across the city, besides hospitals, to check the reasons of the formation of the larvae. Dr Barua will submit her observations and analysis of the data collected from here to the Ministry of Health, Government of India.

She said the civic authorities had been lacking in eliminating certain factors that led to larvae formation. “The health department should have also spread community awareness, one of the factors that has been lacking. But it is also difficult in such a large city to visit each and every household, where people are not doing anything to save themselves from the disease.”