Fortis Hospital, Vadapalani reaches out to Conservation Workers

Chennai, December 10, 2015: While the city is limping back to normalcy and mass scale conservation work is going on, cleaning the city and unclogging the waterways, it goes without saying that, the people who are working towards this are exposed to various health hazards. The rains and flooding have created ideal situations for a host of waterborne diseases like Malaria, Cholera, and Leptospirosis to spread. The disaster management team at Fortis Health Care, Vadapalani wanted to address this issue at its early stages and started reaching out to people who are the most exposed to infections.

The cleaning and conservation workers as well as numerous volunteers who have involved themselves in these activities, to get the city back in shape, are in constant contact with sewage that has mixed with rain water, highly infectious waste material and carcasses of animals that died in the flooding. As the old adage goes ‘prevention is better than cure’ it is sensible that we prevent them from getting infections.

The medical team at Fortis has been going around the city, and is administering TT (Tetanus Toxoid) vaccination to all the conservation workers as a social responsibility. Doxycyclin is also being provided to the workers as a precaution against other water borne infections. The Fortis Healthcare team is also educating them on safety precautions like wearing hand-gloves, footwear, face masks etc., while working. The hospital team has already vaccinated more than 100 conservation workers in Jafferkhanpet and Vadapalani. The team will also be covering other parts of the city like T.Nagar, Saidapet, Tambaram, Velachery and Perungudi in the coming days.

Dr. Abhijit Sinha Roy, Head of Medical services, Fortis Healthcare, Vadapalani said “When a disaster of this scale, which hasn’t been seen in over a century happens, it leaves us with problems unknown and unaddressed and with no literature whatsoever, especially when it comes to new challenges in community healthcare. Fortis Health Care has adopted a prophylaxis model in addressing this issue and it focused more on high-risk areas, namely conservation work, and is trying to prevent diseases from being spread”

Earlier the hospital has sent out mobile medical teams to various flood affected parts of the city to conduct preliminary screening to affected people. So far over 1500 people have been screened in places like Irumbiliyur, Mudichur, Tambaram etc. People have also been provided with prescription medicines free of cost, as and when required. The hospital has plans to continue this activity and reach out to other areas in the city.