Dengue back in Doon, two new cases detected

Detection of two cases of dengue on Thursday has   jolted the district health authorities out of their slumber. Till now, the health department officials remained complacent because of the continuous rain, something which is believed to check the breeding of Aedes mosquito, the vector of dengue. With this, the number of dengue cases reported from the district this season has mounted to five.

The district vector borne diseases officer, Subhash Joshi said while talking to The Pioneer on Friday that the two patients have been tested positive in the Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) test which is confirmatory test for the disease. However, they are out of danger now, he added. He, further, said that while one patient, a resident of Vikasnagar presently working in Ahmadabad, has been released from the hospital another, a resident of Parvanu in Himachal Pradesh ( HP), is  presently recuperating in the hospital. He said that both the patients had contracted the disease outside the State.

Speaking of the dengue menace surfacing in the district, the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Dehradun, Dr S K Gupta said that the department is on an active mode regarding the disease. He said that the department has adequate stock of ELISA kits and medicine required for the disease. The department is also keeping a close eye on the availability of platelets in the blood banks of the district, he said. The CMO further said that the teams of health department have been directed to do door to door survey for information about patients down with fever.

Dengue is a viral infection spread by the mosquito Aedes Aezypti popularly known as Tiger Mosquito. The symptoms of the disease are persistent high fever, rashes, headache and pain in the joints. In the acute cases, the platelets number dwindles drastically which may prove fatal for the patient.  Rainy season is most conducive for rapid growth of mosquito which can lay about 1200 eggs at a time and 400 -500 larvae can emerge from these eggs that take a week’s time to hatch. The mosquito infected with virus thus can increase its number exponentially infecting large number of people in a short span of time. The female tiger mosquito strikes during day time and doctors suggest that people should wear full-sleeved clothes to prevent mosquito bite.

In Uttarakhand, the disease is more prevalent in Dehradun, Haridwar and Udham Singh Nagar districts.