Even though, the floodwaters seem to be receding in the wake of clear weather in Punjab and Haryana for the past two days, now the threat of the spread of rainy season’s mosquito-borne and water-borne diseases is staring at the two states.
According to information reaching here, the death toll on Saturday was said to be 39 in the two states – 19 in Punjab and 20 in Haryana; while the number of people shifted to safe places in Punjab was said to be over 25,000 and about 4,500 in Haryana.
Punjab-Haryana's worst hit districts
While the worst hit districts in the former state were said to be Mohali, Ropar, Patiala, Moga, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Sangrur, Pathankot, Tarn Taran, Ferozepur, Fatehgarh Sahib, Faridkot and SBS Nagar (earlier known as Nawanshahr), the 13 worst-affected districts in Haryana included Panchkula, Ambala, Yamunanagar, Kurukshetra, Fatehabad, Faridabad, Jhajjar, Karnal, Kaithal, Panipat, Sonepat, Palwal and Sirsa.
Meanwhile, the water level in the Yamunanagar’s Hathnikund Barrage which had crossed 3 lakh cusec on Tuesday had receded to about 54,000 cusec on Saturday.
In Punjab, however, the Ghaggar river was still said to be continuing to overflow in several areas in Patiala, Mansa and Sangrur where it had waterlogged a number of residential areas and massive farmlands.
Meanwhile, Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann reiterated that the state government would compensate for every damage caused by the floods. He also announced a special survey of losses caused to crops, homes and others caused by incessant rains.
Health Department steps up preventive measures
Meanwhile, alerted by the massive waterlogging, the health departments of the two states had swung into action and begun holding special camps, distributing medicines and undertaking fogging in the affected areas so as to prevent outbreak of vector borne diseases as well as water-borne and food-borne diseases.
The Punjab health department officials said that teams were already active in the flood affected areas and that at present, 359 Rapid Response Teams were operational while the number of medical camps had been increased to 263. Also, the animal husbandry department, Punjab, had vaccinated 11,672 animals till Saturday.
Risk of water borne diseases
Director General, Health Services, Haryana, Dr Usha Gupta, told FPJ that the state health teams had already started holding special camps in the affected areas. The steps, she said, were necessary as the interruption of safe water and sanitation supplies and the populations displaced by flooding, overcrowding, were at immediate (in days to weeks’ time) high risk of outbreaks of waterborne diseases such as typhoid fever, cholera, leptospirosis, waterborne, hepatitis and the vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue and JE (Japanese Encephalitis).
