Chennai, May 16 (IANS): On the occaion of National Dengue Day, Tamil Nadu Directorate of Public Health and Preventive Medicine has issued a circular to all the district health officials in the state to take measures to prevent breeding of Aedes mosquitoes.

The theme for this year is,' Connect with community, control dengue'.

The Directorate has asked the district health officers to control and prevent dengue fever by strictly following the district action plan.

The district health officials are urged to conduct focused campaigns to educate and inform the people about Dengue fever.

There has been a spike in dengue cases in Tiruppur, Coimbatore, Madurai, Theni, Namakkal, Ariyalur, Tiruvannamalai, Dindigul, Krishnagiri and Thanjavur.

State Director of Public Health, T.S. Selvavinayagam, has instructed officials to conduct focussed campaigns and create awareness on dengue.

The officials were also urged to take up all interventions under the National Programme well on time.

The department has issued guidelines on the collection of reports from government and private hospitals on fever cases and to engage domestic breeding checkers to curtail the breeding of Aedes mosquitos.

He issued instructions to district health officials to comply with the guidelines on the collection of reports of fever from government and private hospitals and to ascertain the presence of dengue viruses.

The district health officials have been urged to conduct source reduction activities to prevent the breeding of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes that carry and spread the infection.