Kolkata: The Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) areas had two consecutive years with second lowest and third lowest dengue cases reported in 2024 and 2025 within a 9-year span since 2017. While 390 dengue cases were reported across Salt Lake and Rajarhat Gopalpur in 2024, BMC ended 2025 by reporting a total of 440 dengue cases, the third-lowest year since 2017.
The lowest number of dengue cases, since 2017, in the BMC area was 238 and it was reported in 2020. The worst-affected years in the BMC area were 2022 and 2023, when a total of 4,222 and 3,956 people, respectively, were reportedly affected by dengue.
Civic officials said that, unlike 2022 and 2023, when dengue cases occurred in several clusters of localities across Salt Lake, Kestopur and Baguiati, in the last two years, each of the 41 wards of BMC mostly reported only one or two dengue cases in a week.
In the last two years, it was only in Nov 2024 that a major dengue outbreak occurred in an orphanage in Salt Lake BK Block. Out of 102 dengue cases that were reported in Oct that year, 40 cases were reported from the orphanage itself. An intensive cleaning drive was conducted by the civic authorities, and medical camps were also held, to curb the dengue cases within a few weeks.
Civic officials attributed the relatively low number of cases over the last two years to the intensive dengue control measures that they conducted. Apart from larvicide spraying, door-to-door visits, and cleaning, the civic authorities also released guppy fish in several water bodies and in the canals to kill mosquito larvae. Notices were also sent to several state and central govt offices, urging them to keep their premises clean to prevent the breeding of mosquitoes.
"Dengue control measures are now conducted throughout the year and are intensified during monsoon. The preventive measures will continue round the year," said a BMC official. There was one dengue death reported in BMC area last year. A 15-year old resident of ESI housing complex opposite Purbachal in Salt Lake succumbed in Oct after contracting the disease. Following the death, the civic authorities formed fever surveillance teams and conducted intensive door to door visits across Salt Lake and Rajarhat Gopalpur.
There was also a late surge with 122 cases reported in Nov, the highest for a single month in 2025. Apart from conducting dengue control drives, BMC authorities provided free of cost medical consultations, medicines and dengue tests at the urban primary health centers located across Salt Lake and Rajarhat Gopalpur.