Preparedness meeting on Japanese Encephalitis/Acute Encephalitis Syndrome held in Sonitpur

A Correspondent

Tezpur: A meeting to assess the preparedness of the district in order to prevent any possible outbreak of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) and Japanese Encephalitis (JE) during the coming monsoon season was held in the District Library auditorium on Friday.

The meeting, which was chaired by Deputy Commissioner Manvendra Pratap Singh, was attended by ADCs Satyajit Chetia, Liza Talukdar, Joint Director, Health Services, Dr. Krishna Kemprai and all doctors of government hospitals, private nursing homes and doctors of tea garden hospitals, various AYUSH doctors and pharmacists of the district.

In view of the outbreak of COVID-19, Deputy Commissioner Manvendra Pratap Singh directed all health department officials and others present to exhibit extreme caution while dealing with any patients showing symptoms of fever and respiratory problems and to take note of any travel history of such patients. He also asked all pharmacy owners to explore the possibility of home delivery of medicines by taking orders through WhatsApp in order to reduce the number of persons coming out of their houses.

He also directed the officials to be fully prepared to tackle any such outbreak, especially in view of COVID-19 outbreak in other parts of the State. He directed the health department officials to identify vulnerable pockets and by analyzing the data of occurrence in previous years, devise a strategy to tackle the disease accordingly.

A presentation for the benefit of all medical practitioners was given by Dr Ankur Phukan, Assistant Professor, Community Medicine, TMCH where he spoke about the ways to identify and differentiate between the symptoms of JE/AES and COVID-19 and course of action that should be taken for testing of such patients. (IANS)

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