India News | West Bengal Not Sharing Dengue Data with Centre Despite Repeated Requests: Union Minister

Kolkata, Nov 11 (PTI) Union Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin Pawar on Friday said that the West Bengal government had not been sharing any information on dengue with the Centre despite repeated requests.

Pawar, who was in Kolkata to participate in the 16th Asian Conference on Diarrhoeal Disease and Nutrition (ASCODD), also said the Centre was constantly trying to guide the states in controlling the vector-borne disease.

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"Our portal receives feedback from all states, but West Bengal has not reported anything on this despite our repeated requests. We have not received any information on how many dengue patients are there in West Bengal, and also on the number of deaths. This information must be shared with the Centre," she said on the sidelines of the programme.

"The Centre is constantly trying to give direction to all the states in controlling the vector-borne disease. Through you, I will again request the state government to bring forth information on dengue at the earliest. Without information, providing help is not possible," she told reporters.

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Officials, however, pointed to glitches in the Centre's website, claiming that it had been sharing information for months.

Asked about the minister's statement, Bengal's director of health services Siddhartha Niyogi, who was also present at the programme, said, "We have heard the minister's message. Maybe the information was not uploaded in some instances. Also, even after the information is shared, the website takes time to get updated. We have been sending information for months."

According to National Centre for Vector Borne Diseases and Control's website, West Bengal last provided dengue-related data on September 30, mentioning 239 cases and zero deaths.

Official sources claimed that over 50 people have died and 52,000 have been infected since the outbreak of the disease this season.

The minister also took on the TMC government for not implementing the Ayushman Bharat scheme of the Centre, maintaining that the state should not deprive people of its benefits.

"After the pandemic, we must concentrate on strengthening the health infrastructure even more. I think the West Bengal government must consider implementing the Ayushman Bharat Yojana. It cannot deprive its people of the benefits of the scheme," Pawar said.

The West Bengal government pulled out of the Ayushman Bharat scheme in 2019, citing that it already launched a similar programme in 2016 -- Swasthya Sathi.

TMC Rajya Sabha MP Shantanu Sen, meanwhile, hit out at Pawar for her statement, contending that health was a state subject and West Bengal needed no "assistance" from the Centre to combat dengue.

"We have experienced non-cooperation by the Centre during the Covid-19 pandemic. I will request the minister to go back to Delhi and ask the PM to clear Bengal's dues of Rs 1.968 lakh crore. She (Pawar) does not need to intervene since health is a state subject," Sen said when contacted.

CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakraborty said that the West Bengal government was hiding the "true picture".

"The Mamata Banerjee-government is hiding dengue-related data as the situation here is bad. We had written to the state government seeking information, but no reply was received," Chakraborty said.

Meanwhile, on Friday, a 30-year-old man from the city's Survey Park area died due to dengue, an official at Peerless Hospital, where he was under treatment since October 22, said.

In the last 24 hours, 905 people in Bengal tested positive for dengue, a health department official said.

(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)