Dengue hit Nagpur hard in three months

NAGPUR: 2014. The year in which the city witnessed outbreak of dengue with 601 cases. Since then, the number of dengue cases has been on the decline.
But 2017 broken the pattern by witnessing more cases than the previous year, albeit marginally.

The malaria and filarial department of the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has reported 199 positive cases of dengue in 2017, a slight increase as compared to 2016 when 195 such cases were recorded.

After the outbreak of dengue in 2014, the number of cases down drastically to 230. "Such is the tendency of all the vector-borne diseases. After standing an outbreak, more citizens become resistant to it," said an NMC official.

"Even as the cases have increased, not a single person in the city died due to dengue. The virus is existent but the intensity through which it used to affect people has surely decreased," the official added.

The year has been an exception since the dengue virus arrived late by a month. The peak season of dengue is between August and December. But in 2017, there were only 7 cases in August, while the virus saw a spurt with 43 cases in September, 72 in October, and 50 in November. Within these three months, dengue accounted for 83% of the total positive cases of the year.

TOI has reported several times about the government underplaying the actual dengue scenario. This year, the civic body received samples of 1,405 patients receiving dengue treatment at local hospitals on the basis of rapid diagnostic kit (RDK) test.

As per the state government's guidelines, the civic body has to perform Eliza test by collecting all the samples, which is considered as a confirmatory test. As per Eliza test results, only 14% (199) of the total dengue cases have been declared as positive by the NMC.

In the meantime, swine flu which wreaked havoc throughout the year was on the decline during the beginning of winter and eventually became non-existent after November 15. Before that, 256 cases and 43 deaths due to swine flu were reported with the NMC.

Recently, the civic body came to know about two unreported deaths due to swine flu from Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH). The deaths were reported in November. As a result, the city recorded 258 positive cases and 45 deaths due to swine flu in 2017.