There has been a belated spurt in dengue afflictions ~ usually a monsoon outbreak ~ in Kolkata and the rest of West Bengal, without the state government being explicit on the number of casualties. Nor for that matter is it known whether the School of Tropical Medicine has now been equipped with suitable diagnostic equipment. Till a few years ago, the blood samples were sent from Kolkata to a laboratory in Pune for the test report. Till a few years ago once more, the casualty toll and the number of afflictions were updated by the KMC and the health department each day on the basis of hospital records.

A critical matter of public health ought never to be kept under the hat. Worse, if a judicial directive is accorded the short shrift. And as with several other spheres of national life, the judiciary has stepped in again in the face of administrative failure on a matter of public health. A Division Bench of Calcutta High Court (coram: TBN Radhakrishnan, CJ; and Arijit Banerjee, J) has sought a report from the state government on whether it had implemented the guidelines advanced by the court in 2017 to combat the potentially mortal affliction. That the judiciary had to frame the guidelines points to the sluggishness of the authorities.

In the absence of official data, the Bench has wanted to know the number of dengue patients who have died this year or have been diagnosed with the ailment, which has been aggravated to an alarming degree in recent weeks. Part of the reason must be the administration’s failure ~ by accident or design ~ to execute the court’s directive of 2017. That order, given by the then Chief Justice, Jyotirmoy Bhattacharya, and Justice Arijit Banerjee had stressed the dire imperative of mobile medical vans, most particularly in the rural areas that are already suffering because of a fragile healthcare mechanism.

The Bench had directed the state government to make people aware of the affliction and to provide medical kits and blood test equipment in every block of every district. The state government must disclose the extent to which it has abided by the directive over the past two years. According to unofficial estimates, as many as 44,000 people have been afflicted and 42 have died this year. Fears that the affliction could turn out to be endemic this year are dangerously real not the least because of the heavy rainfall in October and last weekend’s Cyclone Bulbul that battered Kolkata, North and South 24-Parganas, East and West Midnapore and Howrah.

Rightly has the court intervened, seeking a report on the measures taken by Swasthya Bhavan to tackle the crisis in the segment of public health ~ a matter that is very much under the Chief Minister’s belt. Much as she has reaped a measure of goodwill with her aerial survey of the cyclone-affected areas, she ought now to spur the health department to put its shoulder to the wheel.