Medics busy with polio, malaria stings Rajasthan

Three hours away from the place where Congress chief Sonia Gandhi talked of CM Ashok Gehlot’s ‘‘remarkable governance’&#...

Three hours away from the place where Congress chief Sonia Gandhi talked of CM Ashok Gehlot’s ‘‘remarkable governance’’, Om Prakash Panwar was fighting a losing battle to control the number of malaria patients walking into the Bhaniyana primary health centre.

Catering to a population of over 30,000, grappling with over 250 patients with fever every day and dealing with the fact that the medical officer-in-charge is busy doing rounds with pulse polio vaccines, Panwar says: ‘‘The numbers are increasing everyday. There seems no to way stop it.’’

Waiting his turn is Balu Singh Ki Dhani’s retired headmaster Shang Singh. Five of his family are suffering from malaria. ‘‘There is not a single house in my village where you will not find a patient,’’ says Singh. ‘‘Our village is eight km away and we are the lucky ones. There are those who walk miles to get here. There are sick people everywhere but not enough people or resources to take care of them.’’

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At Bhaniyana, over 600 patient have been detected with the ‘‘not life threatening vivax variety’’, while more than 80 have the deadly palcifarium strain. Round the clock, Khemaram Garg looks into his microscope, checks up to 250 blood samples everyday, hoping that there will be fewer malaria cases to deal with.

‘‘They just keep coming and every other slide I check turns out positive,’’ Garg says. ‘‘Everyone hopes that we don’t have a repeat of 1994.’’

The eight public health centres in Pokhran sub-division were the first to report malaria here. The first deaths were also registered here. Since it began in May, there have been 12 deaths that have been recorded. However, unofficial figures peg the toll at over 50. The discrepancy is primarily due to the fact that health centres are counting only deaths caused by palciferum cases as malarial deaths. Across the state, over 7,000 cases have been reported from Bikaner, Jaisalmer and Barmer districts, with the death toll crossing 30. Even as the government refuses to acknowledge the delay in responding to reports of malaria cases from primary health centres across the desert districts, officials say they had intimated their superiors as early as May.

‘‘We recorded our first death in August,’’ admits Dr R.P. Bisra, in-charge of the community health centre in Pokhran. ‘‘Since then our patients have increased manifold and most cases are of fever.’’ The wards and swelling crowds outside Bisra’s office tell another story. Tired and feverish people jostle to get to him as he tries to keep pace. In his laboratory, two men check over 150 blood samples and in most cases write positive on the report paper.

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Bisra’s centre has so far registered 3,607 cases of malaria of which 286 are palciferum cases and 3,321 vivax cases. But the medical nuances are lost on the people the shadow of death looms over their homes. ‘‘In my village every house has a sick person and two children have already died,’’ says an angry Bhanwar Lal Malli, deputy sarpanch of Didaniya village. ‘‘And all this only because the government didn’t react in time. Even now the mobile teams are not going into the interiors.’’ Singh adds: ‘‘No matter what the administration claims, I know that no one has ever come to our village…There have been good rains but no spraying of DDT.’’

In Pokhran sub-division, there was delay in spraying the second round of DDT because ‘‘willing contractors could not be found’’. Finally, temiphoe was applied, malarial oil distributed and gambushia fish slipped into brimming ponds in September.