In a major achievement for Goa’s health sector, not a single polio case has been reported in the last 17 years with Health Department dishing out regular oral polio vaccine doses as part of the nationwide programs. PANJIM: In a major achievement for Goa’s health sector, not a single polio case has been reported in the last 17 years with Health Department dishing out regular oral polio vaccine doses as part of the nationwide programs. In its 2014-15 Performance Budget tabled in the House, the Directorate of Health underlined that they also undertook house-to-house mop up to administer polio drops for children below five years who have missed on specific polio drops campaigns. “No cases of polio are reported in Goa since 1998,” the report says. During the pan-India polio immunization program on January 29, 2014 and February 23, 2014, a total of 1,28,377 and 1,27,413 children, respectively were administered polio drops at various centers across the State. The department also claims that malaria cases declined in the year 2013 due to continued and concerted intervention measures to curb malaria prevalence in the State. During the calendar year 2013, 4,40,341 patients were screened for malaria of whom 1530 were found positive, while 131 were plasmodium falciparum cases. No deaths were reported during this period. “Total local patients affected by malaria were 418 of which 26 were plasma falciparum cases. Thus over 72.68 percent of cases were amongst migrant population at the construction sites,” the report adds. Besides, there were no cases of filaria reported during this year even as 31,713 persons were screened for microfilaria, whereas 198 cases of dengue and two deaths were reported in 2013. Similarly, there were 48 cases of acute encephalitis syndrome detected of which three were confirmed as of Japanese encephalitis. There were 1049 suspected cases of chikungunya of which 15 were confirmed positive serologically.