Dengue virus continues to send patients to hospitals as doctors in the city report a rise in the number of patients with suspected symptoms. The State’s health administration is expecting the numbers to see a decrease soon.
Data from the National Vector-Borne Disease Control Programme suggest that Telangana has recorded 1,929 infections this year, significantly lower than last year’s 4,037, but more than what the State had recorded in the two years before. The number of infections as of date has tripled since August-end.
Hyderabad district has reported around 446 cases, data compiled by NVBDCP’s State Programme Officer shows. The fever Hospital Superintendent, Dr. K. Shankar, said the number of cases was increasing and so far there had been 100 cases at the hospital. “We are seeing people coming in with suspected symptoms of dengue and a few with chikunguniya. But there have been no mortalities this year,” he added.
According to Dr. S. Prabhavathi, State Programme Officer, a few deaths attributed to dengue were audited but a conclusive link to the virus could not be found. “In many private hospitals, a diagnosis is made based on rapid diagnostic testing. The Government of India considers an infection dengue only if it is confirmed by either NS 1 antigen test or IgM antibody testing. That apart, we also found that a few suspected deaths were due to other health conditions,” she said.
The officer said the number of infections reported was only a fraction of the actual number of infections. “Many people do not come to a hospital if the infection is mild, as in most cases,” Dr. Prabhavathi said, adding that an outbreak like the situation in Khammam was controlled before it became an epidemic.
With 577 reported infections so far, Khammam is the worst hit. Maturipet and Nagulavancha are two areas where an outbreak was controlled, the officer said, adding that no deaths had been reported during the recent outbreak in Khammam, and that the number of infections would soon see a decrease.
However, health workers assisting patients at government hospitals paint a different picture. According to Mujtaba Hasan Askari of Helping Hand Foundation, each day around 150 suspected cases of dengue were being tested in city’s hospitals the foundation assisted in, and around a quarter of them were turning out to be positive.