NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Friday alleged that the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) had neither procured dengue-chikungunya medicines nor run any awareness campaign. MCD has refuted the charges.
“The most important factor in combating dengue-chikungunya is the spraying of medicines by domestic breeding checkers. For the first time in the history of Delhi, there has been such a situation where medicines to keep dengue-chikungunya under check have not been procured by MCD,” alleged AAP MLA Durgesh Pathak.
MCD called the allegations “false and without any basis” and claimed it had procured all required insecticides in advance. “A canard is being spread that MCD has not procured the insecticides to be sprayed for checking dengue-chikungunya this year. Such a claim is false and without any basis,” MCD stated. “It is emphasised that MCD attaches top priority to public health and as much as vector-borne diseases like chikungunya, dengue and malaria is concerned, it makes its preparedness well in advance,” it added.
According to AAP, one of the biggest achievements of the “Kejriwal government in the last five-six years is it has managed to plug dengue-chikungunya outbreaks. Back in 2013-14, dengue and chikungunya deaths in Delhi used to be constant headlines on TV. Hospitals were full of patients. But CM Arvind Kejriwal’s team took up the cause like a mission”.
MCD, however, claimed that the continuous dip in dengue cases in the past few years had been “the result of relentless action of its ground-level staff, especially 3,170 domestic breeding checkers”. The tender process and procurement of medicines for 2022-23 was done in 2021-22, it added.
According to the civic body, it has an inventory of 13,168kg diflubenzuron , 5,880kg MLO, 270 litre temephos liquid, 15,715kg Temephos GR 1%, 12,917.5kg alphacypermermerhrin and 4,677kg cyphenothrin, adequate to cater to this season. Further, 2,280kg diflubenzuron and 88,000kg temephos are to be supplied soon.
AAP, however, called these claims false and said that in 2022-23, the supply would only be 2,280kg. The rest has been misreported by MCD and almost the same is the case with other medicines, it claimed.
