• Abhishek Mondal

The study intends to demonstrate the potential of the newspaper articles to portray the Dengue Fever outbreak and the potential harm it causes to the Public Health in West Bengal with special reference to Kolkata. The newspapers serve as the source of valuable information on the early Dengue fever outbreak detection, surveillance and epidemiological research. The objective of the study was 1) To find out how the fluctuation of Dengue Fever reported articles in one ‘Local’ and one ‘National’ newspaper circulated in Kolkata, can be used to monitor the temporal trends of Dengue outbreak in Kolkata. 2) To uncover and highlight the underlying fact from the news articles which discussed the Dengue Death in Kolkata in the year 2018. 3) To find out how were the public health facts used in the news articles to spread awareness, control and prevention of the spread of Dengue Virus in Kolkata. The method used was the ‘Media Content Analysis’, here the two leading newspaper ‘Anandabazar Patrika’ and ‘The Telegraph Calcutta’, was used to analyse the Dengue Fever news articles and how they cluster together to communicate the Public Health massages to their audience through the press. A total of 1900 articles were analysed over a period of one year (January 2018 to December 2018), and they were searched according to the selected keywords. The articles were coded and framed according to their type. The data were then entered in ‘Microsoft Excel 2007’ and analysed. The results showed that a strong positive correlation was seen between the reported number of Dengue Death cases and the number of news articles published in the year 2018. And also a strong positive correlation was seen between the Dengue Death case and the related Environmental Pollution (water logging in garbage, tyre, tank, drain, ponds, vegetation, canal) as portrayed and published in ‘picture article’ by the news papers. This study showed the advance approach in analysing the news paper articles and produce valuable information to detect the early occurrences of Dengue Fever and to take necessary action and surveillance by the Public Health professionals specially in India with due importance to Kolkata, where the dengue case gets under reported or not reported at all due to poor infrastructure.

Public Health Model of Reporting, Dengue Fever, Dengue Death, Environmental Pollution, India.

"Dengue Mortality Rate challenges the Public Health System in Kolkata: A Sociological Investigation", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.7, Issue 6, page no.281-286, June-2020, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2006043.pdf

"Dengue Mortality Rate challenges the Public Health System in Kolkata: A Sociological Investigation", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.7, Issue 6, page no. pp281-286, June-2020, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2006043.pdf