WHILE the Mumbai civic administration is dealing with an increase in cases of rain-related ailments this monsoon, the state health administration has had to tackle fewer instances of disease outbreaks so far. Since April, there have been only 15 deaths in the other parts of the state due to water-borne and vector-borne diseases. Nine of these deaths are due to water-borne diseases like gastroenteritis and diarrhoea, and six due to vector-borne diseases like malaria and dengue. Since April, the state has recorded ten outbreaks and 88 positive cases of dengue and three outbreaks and four of chikungunya. There have been 5212 cases of malaria of which 893 are falcifarum malaria. "Compared to last year we tiave done better in terms of 'handling monsoon diseases. This can be a result of several sanitation schemes being run by the government in villages," said Dr S V Ranade, Assistant Director, health services, Maharashtra. Mumbai has seen 26 deaths due to monsoon-related ailments since the beginning of rains this June. "The system of reporting the cases has been strengthened. We are transparent about it and the figures are real. I do not want to compare it with the system of data collection in other parts of the state," said Dr Jairaj Thanekar, executive health officer, BMC. According to the state health department, there have been 22 "focal outbreaks" of water-borne diseases like gastroenteritis, diarrhoea, infectious hepatitis and typhoid since April. These outbreaks are determined when five persons in a locality are detected with the disease. Of these 12 are gastroenteritis outbreaks in Dhule, Jalgaon, Pune and Jalna. Seven outbreaks of diarrhoea have taken place in Nashik, Solapur, San-gli, Kolhapur and three outbreaks of infectious hepatitis. "There are some ongoing outbreaks in Jalna, Beed and Daund in Pune. But those are under control," said Dr Ranade. According to the state department, there have been 28 cases of cholera, of which 22 are from Solapur alone.