CREDAI joins hands with MCC to fight malaria

MANGALORE: Builders affiliated to Confederation of Real Estate and Developers' Associations of India (CREDAI) in this coastal city have come forward to contribute their bit to city's effort against vector borne diseases. Often at the wrong end of Mangalore City Corporation's drive against malaria, especially in construction sites, CREDAI has come forward to provide manpower and logistical support to help keep tabs on incidence of malaria.

CREDAI accordingly has agreed to provide three vehicles fitted with GPS. Each vehicle with six personnel will visit construction sites and monitor it for conditions that allow mosquito larvae to breed there. Two of the personnel will collect blood smears from onsite construction workers, two inspect the site and remaining two take notes of shortcomings noted, if any, and inform the respective project developers to take corrective actions.

With nearly 470 construction sites dotting the city landscape, it will be a tough ask for these three teams to visit all of them, corporation commissioner Harish Kumar said. CREDAI has also come forward to develop in-house software that will enable it to monitor the visit of the teams to construction sites, and confirm their meeting with the site supervisors, who will be the persons responsible to ensure that sites are mosquito breeding free zones.

Harish said this arrangement will however not come in the way of the civic body initiating penal action against promoters of building projects if their construction sites are found to be spawning spread of the disease. "Mangalore City corporation teams have inspected around 60 construction sites and cancelled licenses in three instances for violating guidelines on keeping their area free from malaria causing female anopheles mosquitoes," he noted.

The civic body has also reached out to hotel owners asking them to maintain cleanliness of their premises and avoid spread of the disease, he said. "We have suggested them to deploy teams of private health inspectors for periodical examination of hotel premises as well as the place where their employees rest and provide mosquito nets to them," he said, adding regular screening of hotel employees too would be done to check for malaria.

Source: articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com