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MANGALURU: Dakshina Kannada and Udupi are unlikely to shake off the dubious tag of being the malaria capital of Karnataka anytime soon. This was only reinforced at an inter-departmental co-ordination meeting of officials of the two districts on malaria here on Thursday, where the chilling statistics revealed that the two districts put together have reported more than 9,000 cases of malaria in 2014, which is more than 50% of total malaria cases in Karnataka.

 Dr B G Prakash, joint director (malaria and filaria) said the number of cases of the dreaded vector-borne disease in Dakshina Kannada district have increased from 7,025 in 2010 to 8,240 cases in 2014. Number of malaria cases in Udupi district in the same period has increased from 1,528 cases to 1,639 cases. Out of the 8,240 cases, 7,313 cases are from Mangaluru City Corporation area. The reason for more number of cases is because of better reporting mechanism, he pointed out. Karnataka as a whole recorded 14,569 cases in 2014, which was 1% of total malaria cases in India. An area of concern in the two districts is spurt in number of cases of Plasmodium Falciparum (PF) malaria, which has high chance of morbidity.

 Number of PF malaria cases which was 52 in January, 2014, rose to 140 in July. Number of PF malaria cases came down to 30 in December 2014. There has been a 45% increase in number of PF Malaria cases in the Dakshina Kannada, he said.
Blood smears test
 Health activist Suresh Shetty said private hospitals in the city are not taking blood smears of affected persons as they go in for Quantitative Buffy Coast (QBC) test for detecting the disease. In the absence of smears, department of health is not in a position to audit deaths of persons suspected to have succumbed to malaria which private hospitals report. Dr Prakash asked DHO Dr Ramakrishna Rao to instruct all private hospitals to collect blood smears while doing QBC test.

Stinging facts: Health activist Suresh Shetty said private hospitals in the city are not taking blood smears of affected persons as they go in for Quantitative Buffy Coast (QBC) test for detecting the disease. In the absence of smears, department of health is not in a position to audit deaths of persons suspected to have succumbed to malaria which private hospitals report.