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Drive to eliminate filaria hits wall of Covid fear in 13 districts

RANCHI: After a slow start, the 11-day mass drug administration drive to eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis in 13 highly-endemic districts of the state is slowly gaining pace amid a Covid scare in the state which is keeping people from visiting the camps set up for the purpose.

The spike in the number of Covid-19 cases has led to apprehensions among people and has emerged as a big challenge for authorities with the state capital seeing only 9.69% of the total targeted population turning up at booths.

Till Tuesday, Ranchi recorded 3,799 cases of Covid of which 1,921 are still active and 33 have succumbed to the virus.

The 13 districts selected for the exercise are Godda, Giridih, Ranchi, Khunti, Gumla, Hazaribag, Garhwa, Chatra, East Singhbhum, West Singhbhum, Deoghar, Dumka and Simdega. The state government has set a target of administering anti-filarial drugs among 1.9 crore people across 18,000 villages of these districts to eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis.

Among the 13 districts, Khunti topped the chart with 48% of the targeted population consuming the drug in two days. As of Tuesday, a total of 51.6 lakh of the total 1.9 crore targeted population have been administered medicines which constitutes to around 26.36%.

“Earlier, people used to turn up in large numbers, but the attendance has taken a hit in the districts that have higher numbers Covid cases. The stark contrast between the number of people turning up in Ranchi and Khunti is because of the fact that the state capital has over 1,500 containment zones whereas Khunti has only around 70,” said a health department official.

Sunil Oraon, a labourer and a resident of ward number 26 of Ranchi, said, “I am scared of coronavirus, but then I have come here as I was informed by a neighbour that the drug is important for people who earn their livelihood by working on a daily basis.”

Officials administering the drug to prevent filaria have also been asked to maintain social distancing norms and wear masks at all times during the exercise. “Patients with micro filarial worms in their bodies experience nausea, vomiting, headache and mild fever after taking the medicines. In order to attend to such cases, we have directed rapid response teams at block and district levels to be on alert at all times. I appeal one and all from the 13 districts to come forward and help us make Jharkhand filaria-free,” said state health secretary Nitin Madan Kulkarni.

In order to ensure maximum compliance, the state health department has deployed 8,456 supervisors and 84,561 volunteers across the state and constituted rapid response teams to attend to any adverse event during the exercise.

Barring Simdega, all the 12 districts will be administering Di-ethylcarbamazine and Albendazole among the targeted population while Simdega will be administering Ivermectine along with the rest two drugs.

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