Gorakhpur (UP), Jun 30 (PTI) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will launch a campaign against communicable diseases from Gorakhpur's Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Medical College on Friday.

The chief minister arrived in Gorakhpur on Thursday for the programme and paid obeisance at the Gorakhnath temple.

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According to information department officials, a detailed plan for the campaign against communicable diseases has been prepared by the departments concerned. The focus will be on controlling vector-borne diseases such as dengue, malaria and chikungunya.

The state government claims that the spread of Japanese encephalitis (JE), which took thousands of lives in the district between 1978 and 2017, has been curbed in the last two years with no deaths.

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In 2016, there were 701 patients of acute encephalitis syndrome (AES) in Gorakhpur, of whom 139 died. In 2017, 874 AES patients were registered, of whom 121 died.

However, things took a turn after 2017. In 2021, only 251 AES patients were registered in the district, of whom 15 died.

In 2016, there were 36 JE patients, of whom nine died. In 2017, there were 49 JE patients, of whom 10 died. The numbers came further down in the last couple of years.

In 2021, 14 JE patients were found and this year, only five such patients have so far been registered with no deaths, health department officials claim.

Adityanath has said AES and JE will be eradicated from the district and the state in the coming years.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)