South
Preventive health in Kerala
High rainfall, dense settlement and repeated flooding drive leptospirosis, and Kerala is where India's Nipah outbreaks have occurred.
What matters most in Kerala
Leptospirosis (rat fever)
Why here: Bacteria in rodent urine enter through cuts and softened skin during wading, flooding and paddy work.
What to look for: Fever with severe calf muscle pain, red eyes, and later jaundice or reduced urine.
What to do: Tell the doctor you waded in floodwater — that history changes treatment. Preventive doxycycline is given to exposed groups during floods; take it if offered.
Nipah virus
Why here: Outbreaks here have been linked to fruit bats, including via date palm sap and contaminated fruit, with person-to-person spread in hospitals.
What to look for: Fever with headache progressing to drowsiness, confusion or breathlessness during a declared outbreak.
What to do: Do not drink raw palm sap and do not eat fruit with bite marks. During an outbreak follow health-department instructions exactly, including masks around a sick relative.
Dengue
Why here: Year-round breeding in stored water and rubber-plantation latex cups makes transmission unusually persistent.
What to look for: The day 3–7 warning phase: belly pain, vomiting, bleeding, or sudden collapse after the fever settles.
What to do: Empty latex cups and stored water weekly. Paracetamol only — never ibuprofen or aspirin.
And everywhere in India
These are not specific to Kerala, but they cause more illness nationally than anything above, and every one of them is covered free by a national programme.
Heavy rain and dense settlement put several of these in the same weeks. The floodwater behind the leptospirosis risk above also leaves the standing water that breeds dengue mosquitoes, and both follow the same monsoon. Snakebite is a homestead and paddy risk rather than a wilderness one. Health facilities are close by Indian standards, which removes the usual excuse for a late rabies vaccine.
Tuberculosis
What to do: Diagnosis and the full drug course are free under the NTEP at any government facility. Stopping early is what creates drug-resistant TB — finish the course.
Snakebite
What to do: Go straight to a government hospital with antivenom. Do not cut, suck, or apply a tourniquet, and do not go to a traditional healer first — that detour is what kills.
Rabies
What to do: Wash the wound with soap under running water for 15 minutes, then get the vaccine the same day. Free under the NRCP. A wound that looks trivial still counts.
Dengue
What to do: Fluids and paracetamol only. Avoid ibuprofen and aspirin, which worsen bleeding. Empty standing water weekly — the mosquito breeds in clean water at home, not in drains.
What to look for with each of these, and why they matter across India →
The programmes named on this page
- NTEP — National TB Elimination Programme
- NRCP — National Rabies Control Programme
Each is a real government programme, and the testing or treatment described is free at a government facility.
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