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August 2010 -- Health minister B Sriramulu has virtually created a mini mobile phone "call centre" out of his August 5 promise to be a hands-on minister to streamline anti-dengue measures in the state. But has it helped him deliver on his promise?

Ironically, the rising popularity of this concept itself has rendered this strategy useless. With a shocking round-the-clock rate of two calls a minute, the eight officials appointed by Sriramulu to attend to the calls in three-hour shifts are finding it too much to handle.

Living up to Bangalore’s image as a technology city of the country, Sriramulu on August 5 struck upon an idea to put the mobile phone to good use to take calls about dengue, chikungunya and other epidemic diseases from the common people directly.

The aim was to make it easy for reporting dengue (or suspected dengue) cases directly to the health department officials by calling on the mobile phone number 9901157777. The health minister publicly announced the number on August 5 for people to directly inform or get doubts cleared with health officials.

But when DNA called this number on Tuesday afternoon, one of Sriramulu’s eight officials, who refused to identify himself, said "Most callers complain of private hospitals charging excessively and about inadequate treatment there. But we are helpless as we have neither tie-ups with nor information coming from private hospitals."

Sriramulu’s "call centre’s" biggest problem is taking action based on a tsunami of verbal accusations by callers against private hospitals. The officials confirmed to DNA that they receive at least 800 calls every day, mostly from Chamarajanagar, Udupi, Bangalore, Mangalore and Mysore.

"If found credible, we report the callers’ cases to the respective health officers in the districts or wards," said another official, who admitted it was getting out of control.

They also said callers arbitrarily reported deaths as "dengue deaths" even before the cases were confirmed. This also posed problems for them to assess which ones to report to health officers.

"Last week, a 70-year-old manfrom Hospet died and the villagers said it was dengue. We found that the man had died due to kidney failure," said an official. "We first speak to the doctors and confirm whether it is dengue with the NIV, which again takes time."

Sriramulu could not be contacted.

Posted by Veronica Silva Cusi, news correspondent

Source: http://www.dnaindia.com

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