4,000 dengue cases in state so far against 7,600 last yr, 1 death: CM
Times of India | 2 September 2026
Kolkata: While the number of dengue cases in Bengal this year is significantly less in number than the earlier years, Bengal CM Suvendu Adhikari on Tuesday did a review meeting on dengue and other vector borne diseases at Swasthya Bhawan. The meeting was attended by various stakeholders, including health, urban development, transport irrigation, police, district and civic body administrators.
“Last year by this time now the state had logged 7,600 plus dengue cases. This year during the same period around 4,000 plus positive dengue case are there so far. At present there is one death and 148 active cases across the state. Hence the number this year is only about 50% of last year,” the CM said while addressing the media at Swasthya Bhawan, after the review meeting.
Adhikari said the bulk of the 148 active cases are from Murshidabad’s Amtala (9) and 11 from Nadia Chakdah while the rest are scattered across the state. In KMC few cases are found from only 12 wards while 61 wards have no dengue cases.
“But the dengue season is not over yet. In fact our health minister who is also a doctor says we need to be cautious till Nov, Practically we have seen a surge during Aug and Sept,” said the CM who was flanked by health minister Sharadwat Mukherjee, minister of state health Sumana Sarkar and the principal health secretary Narayan Swaroop Nigam.
The CM has instructed stocking up of enough testing kits, strict fever surveillance by ASHA workers during door-to-door visit to identify people who need dengue test and ensure it free of cost, keeping a tab on family members of the 148 active cases, destroying of mosquito breeding sites in those localities, distribution of mosquito nets in slum areas if clustering of cases are found.
“Our govt took charge on May 9. On May 23 our CS Manoj Agarwal met the relevant departments on vector borne diseases control measures. After that there has two more meetings in July and Aug. I came to the meeting today to find out about the implementation part,” said Adhikari.
The CM said that in Kolkata and greater Kolkata there are non-functioning municipalities which do not have administrators. But despite having chairmen, civic bodies like Dum Dum, South Dum Dum and Habra are not working. Adhikari said the process was on to appoint administrators for other civic bodies.
“During the previous govt doctors would be scared to write dengue. There is no reason to shy away from writing dengue if it is diagnosed. The govt and the health depat is there to take care in case of any surge. Ours is a new govt and we will learn and by next year our precautionary measures would be even stronger,” the CM said.
The CM also cautioned doctors to wait for certain conclusive reports before a death is linked with dengue. In fact, sources said that the health dept had constituted a dengue death review committee which will go through each death of a dengue positive person to officially decide if dengue is the primary cause of death.
“We are sharing all data not only on dengue but for other depts with the central govt,” said CM said. The state has not been updating its dengue data with National Vector Borne Diseases Control Programme for the past two years even as dengue is a notifiable disease.