India

MANGALORE: This coastal city's dubious distinction of being the malaria capital of the state received yet another affirmation at the general meeting of Mangalore City Corporation held here on Friday. The issue came to the fore when former leader of the opposition Harinath drew the attention of the council to reports of increasing cases of malaria during April, an incident, which he said was unusual and alarming even by the city's standards. Confirming the member's fear, the corporation's malaria officer Deepak Bolar said the malaria control cell of the civic body had received reports of 46 cases in this month from the campus of National Institute of Technology — Karnataka at Srinivasnagar near here. A visit to the campus, which is seeing a lot of construction activity confirmed the findings, he said adding that those affected included students as well as labourers on the campus. Out of the 46 cases, Dr Bolar said 16 were of plasmodium falciparum (PF) type, 14 were plasmodium vivax (PV) and 16 of mixed type — that is a mix of both PF and PV. Noting that this high incidence of malaria reported from NIT-K campus was mainly due to water stagnation on construction sites there, Dr Bolar said the cell warned authorities concerned to ensure that there is water stagnation while collecting blood samples of those affected.
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