Alipurduar set to get insect centre

Anirban Choudhury, TT, Alipurduar: The Indian Council of Medical Research has decided to start a research centre on insect-borne diseases in Alipurduar.

Sources said the centre would come up on the first floor of the office of Chief Medical Officer of Health. The medical council in Dibrugarh has decided to provide Rs 40 lakh for the research centre.

District health officials have purchased a few apparatus for the centre and would buy a microscope soon. Ananta Majhi will be in charge of the centre.

According to a health official in Alipurduar, there is no other research centre in the state to study insect-borne diseases other than the Tropical School of Medicine in Calcutta.

Alipurduar district has many cases of malaria and other similar diseases like dengue, chikungunia and Japanese Encephalitis in the past few years. Recently, people were suffering from Strap Typhus also.

After doing research at the centre, health officials will be able to gather knowledge about how these diseases can be controlled and what are the precautions to be taken.

Suborno Goswami, deputy CMOH II, Alipurduar, said: "We will be able to know the areas of tea gardens where mosquito are found, which mosquito is found in the day and which comes out during the night. The behaviour of the mosquitoes will be studied. We will have insect catchers also."

"They will catch the mosquitoes from different areas. We will be able to know in which areas we have to concentrate more. More importantly, we will be able to use specific medicines. For example, DDT does not affect the mosquitoes responsible for dengue."

He added that a team from Alipurduar would visit Dibrugarh soon. Insects experts from Dibrugarh will also will come to work at the centre.

From January 2018, the researchers will start their work across the district.

"We have already distributed 47,000 medicated mosquito nets in the last three months. The team members will check if the people are using the mosquito nets or not," Goswami said.