PANAJI
The spectre of dengue has begun to haunt Goa, with outbreaks in sporadic regions rattling both the public and the healthcare system.
Last week’s incident in Margao, where multiple police personnel at the town’s police station were affected, sent alarm bells ringing. Just days earlier, half‑a‑dozen fire services staff in Porvorim had tested positive, raising fears of clusters emerging in critical institutions.
Despite the outbreaks, Directorate of Health Services (DHS) officials maintain the situation is not yet alarming. Most cases, they insist, remain in the “suspect” category.
A senior official at the DHS’s National Vector‑borne Disease Control Programme cell disclosed that in July the State recorded only seven confirmed dengue cases -- all in South Goa. These included three in Ponda and one each in Margao, Curtorim, Loutolim and Sanguem.
“However, suspected cases with clinical symptoms but no confirmed positive results when tested were a whopping 882, including 639 in South Goa and 243 in the North,” the official admitted.
But the sharp difference between confirmed and suspected cases has triggered unease, and doctors warn that the sheer volume of clinically symptomatic patients points to a wider spread of the vector‑borne disease than official numbers suggest.
Officials continue to stress that community vigilance is key. Stagnant water in construction sites, open storage in households, and poor sanitation remain the primary breeding grounds for the Aedes aegypti mosquito.
Before the monsoon arrived in late June, Goa’s dengue situation was firmly under control with the DHS reporting just a solitary case in April, a steep fall from six cases in the same month last year and 19 the year before.
From January to April this year, the State logged 11 cases, compared to 29 in 2025 and 96 in 2024, and officials had credited the decline to aggressive measures: door‑to‑door awareness drives, destruction of breeding sites, and targeted action in hotspots.
The DHS has stressed the importance of community participation and has upped its intervention with teams, along with local panchayats, working to eliminate breeding grounds.
Officials say they are stepping up surveillance, fumigation and awareness drives in hotspot areas, but the rising tide of suspected cases underlines that the challenge will only grow more difficult as the monsoon progresses.
