Howrah has directed Durga Puja organisers to seal hollow, bowl-shaped sections of bamboo used in pandals to prevent water from collecting and creating potential mosquito-breeding sites during the dengue season. The instruction comes ahead of the festival as the weather department has forecast the possibility of rain before or after Puja.
The Howrah district health department has asked organisers to fill the open sections at the top of bamboo structures with soil and seal them. Block-level health workers and Howrah municipal health officials have been instructed to monitor whether the directive is being followed and to continue awareness campaigns among Puja organisers.
The intervention is aimed at temporary festival infrastructure that can create small water-holding spaces during the rainy season. According to the district health department, dengue-carrying mosquitoes can lay eggs in as little as five millilitres of water. Organisers have also been asked to fill in the pits dug to install bamboo after the Puja ends.
The directive has been issued even though the district’s reported dengue numbers are lower than in recent years. Health department data cited in the report show that 6,485 people had been infected in Howrah during the comparable period in 2022. The number fell to 5,806 in 2023 and to 1,164 in 2024, when special efforts were carried out throughout the year. In 2025, the reported number of infections was 1,033.
This year, Howrah has recorded 411 cases so far, with the municipal area accounting for the larger share. Of the total, 242 cases were reported in the municipal area and 196 in rural parts of the district during the past 39 weeks, according to the figures provided by the district health department.
Chief Medical Officer of Health Kishlay Dutta said the district health department and the Howrah municipal health department had worked continuously on dengue control in recent years. He also attributed part of the reduction in cases to sustained cleaning in dengue-prone areas by the municipal waste-removal department, along with the regular use of larvicide oil and the release of guppy fish to control mosquito larvae.
Dutta said the authorities did not want to take risks before winter and wanted to prevent dengue from returning to its earlier levels after the monsoon. The instruction on bamboo sections is therefore part of a wider preventive effort covering festival sites, waste removal and municipal monitoring rather than a response to a reported outbreak at any particular Pandal.
The health department has said that Howrah municipality and health officials will continue dengue-awareness work during Puja. The campaign will also demonstrate how open containers holding water should be covered with nets. Monitoring of the temporary structures and the removal or closure of water-holding spaces will continue through the festival period and after the pandals are dismantled.
