Coverage Very Poor In JE (Japanese Encephalitis), AES-Prone Districts

Coverage Very Poor In JE (Japanese Encephalitis), AES-Prone Districts

Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI: Under National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) guidelines there are special attention and funds for JE (Japanese Encephalitis) and Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES)-prone districts. However, the percentage of fully-covered rural habitations in the ten JE and AES-prone districts in the State is just 58.9 per cent against 62.6 per cent in the State as a whole. The percentage of fully-covered rural habitations at the national level is 81.03 per cent. This is an area where Assam has cut a sorry figure.

Over 100 lives have been claimed by JE and AES in the State this year. The NRDWP, which is being run by the Ministry of Jal Shakti, is being implemented in the State by its PHE (Public Health Engineering) department.

The ten JE and AES-prone districts and their fully-covered habitations in the State, as on July 25, 2019, are 1357 of 3389 in Barpeta, 1165 of 2312 in Dhemaji, 5578 of 7028 in Dibrugarh, 2749 of 4207 in Golaghat, 2125 of 2958 in Jorhat, 2200 of 2621 in Lakhimpur, 2410 of 2965 in Sivasagar, 1588 of 2715 in Sonitpur, 1269 of 3214 in Tinsukia and 298 of 2420 in Udalguri.

Talking to this reporter, a PHE official said, “No proposal has come from the Japanese Encephalitis and AES-prone districts for special projects under the NRDWP this year. All the projects going on there are general ones under the NRDWP. Since JE and AES aren’t water-borne but vector-borne diseases, they’ve no direct impact from drinking water. However, we’re on a mission to cover all households under the programme, but we’ve covered some habitations fully and some other partially. Of late, the Centre has taken up the ‘Har Ghar Nal, Har Ghar Jal’ project under which all households in the country are to be supplied with piped water by 2024. All households in Assam will also be covered under this project irrespective of JE/AES-prone or quality-affected habitations. This project is supposed to bring all the existing water supply projects in the State under one package.”

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