State govt to provide concrete houses in 4 affected districts

DHANBAD: In a bid to eliminate visceral leishmaniasis, locally known as Kala Azar, by end of this year, the state government will provide concrete houses to village residents of Jharkhand’s four affected districts--Dumka, Godda, Pakur and Sahebgunj, officials said on Sunday.

A senior officer of health department’ Vector-borne Disease (VBD) wing said the insect that causes, ‘Leishmania Donovani’, crops up mainly in mud (kutcha) houses due to moisture and darkness . Therefore,the government has decided to replace such houses with concrete ones for residents of the affected districts to end breeding of the insect.

Since majority of village residents of the affected districts are tribal and poor, the government would provide concrete houses to those who have not benefitted under PM Awas Yojna or Indira Awas Yojna till date.

The official said that a survey found the insect in 17 of 40 houses at Ghatwar Tola of Mohmanga village in Dumka district.In India, the four states of Uttar Pradesh , Bihar, Bengal and Jharkhand are considered the worst affected with Kala Azar. Union health minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, while reviewing the Kala Azar menace on December 30 through video conferencing, had highly appreciated the Jharkhand government’s scheme of building concrete houses to tackle the problem and had asked the other states to also follow suit.

“The state government has targeted to eliminate Kala Azar in 11 months ( by December 2021) . The first goal is to bring down the cases to less than one case among a population of 10,000, and the second goal is its eradication by 2022,” said Dr SN Jha, state VBD officer, who visits the affected districts fortnightly.

In order to achieve the goals, a comprehensive drive for active case search (ACS) and indoor residual spraying (IRS) would be conducted from February 5 to March 31 in the aforementioned four districts, Dr Jha said.