Prevention strategy: Software in the works to monitor dengue control teams

DCO hopeful that every house will be rid of dengue mosquitoes.

LAHORE:

The City District Government is preparing software to track real time updates on the performance of dengue control teams and possible vector pockets.

Lahore DCO Ahad Cheema chaired a meeting at Town Hall where personnel of Urban Unit, Punjab Information Technology Board and Institute of Public Health (who, along with Lahore University of Management Sciences students, are collaborating on the preparation of the software) were present. The salient features of the software, vectors surveillance, fogging, disease surveillance, IRS and tyre regulation, were discussed.

The meeting was told that the database would be regularly updated and it would identify areas where the larvae could flourish. The performance of CDGL employees would also be gauged through it. A control room would be prepared in the Town Hall to monitor the activities of vector control officers around the city.

Tariq Zaman, the principal staff officer to the DCO, said Urban Unit officers were preparing a dengue map of Lahore which would be updated by the CDGL. He said Dashboard software would help streamline those areas where mosquitoes breed and which are being missed by the CDGL. He said the Urban Unit would also give android sets to CDGL officers so that they could provide real time information.

Zaman said that once a patient was registered, officers could be questioned about their performance in the relevant area. He said that 1,500 CDGL personnel would clear the city in a phased campaign. He said that as soon as the workers cleared an area they would inform the control room.

The DCO was told that in the later stages data would also be collected by hospitals where patients were admitted. Cheema said a fumigation campaign would be launched to ensure that every house in the city was dengue free. He said the 3,000 tyre shops in the city would be cleared by CDGL workers. He added that random checks would be made to verify that the arrangements were working.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 18^th, 2012.