Koz corp to conduct migrant screening camps

Kozhikode: Corporation authorities here will ink an agreement with the government nursing college to conduct a migrants screening programme effectively for the early detection of malaria.

They will conduct the programme this year with the participation of district health department, Kozhikode Government Medical College, labour department and government nursing college to cover around one lakh migrant workers working in the organized and unorganized sectors.

The decision to conduct an elaborate screening camp was proposed as some of the corporation areas were identified and enlisted as malaria hotspots in the list prepared by the district health department during its disease mapping. Three harbor areas of Vellayil, Beypore and Puthiyappa in the Kozhikode corporation limits are the identified hot spots.

Health department will provide doctors to the corporation to conduct the camps. The mobile lab facility of district vector control unit will be used to conduct blood screening test among migrants for the early detection of malaria.

The health section of the civic body has commenced the preparation of a detailed plan covering 75 corporation wards for the effective operation of the migrant screening. The camp is mainly intended to eliminate malaria especially indigenous malaria cases by 2020. The corporation areas will be divided into three zones for the screening programme.

The decision to conduct screening covering all the corporation wards was taken after it was observed that the screening camp and health awareness programme launched two years ago had helped to bring down the total number of malaria cases from 114 in 2017 to below 85 in 2018.

Health inspectors of the 18 health circles and three zonal offices of Elathur, Cheruvannur-Nallalam and Beypore will carry out door-to-door visit to serve notices to migrant workers staying in rental buildings and camps at the construction sites to ensure their participation in the screening camps. The civic body has also started placing nets on wells and vent pipes of houses to avoid breeding of mosquitoes. It has earmarked a sum of Rs 4.5 lakh in the annual plan fund for sthe financial year 2019-2020 for the medical camp.

According to the health department, 23 imported and one indigenous malaria case has been reported from the district from August 1, 2019 to October 19. Out of this, one indigenous malaria case has been reported from the limits of Kozhikode corporation.

Corporation health officer Dr R S Gopakumar said that civic body has already purchased 2,300kg of Bacillus Thuringiensis, a solid dwelling bacterium, commonly used as a biological pesticide to eliminate mosquitos, which will be sprayed on clogged water to eliminate the Anopheles mosquitos causing malaria.

“Elimination of parasite of malaria is a major task as it could get transmitted to humans through the infected mosquito bites,” he said.