Swine flu toll reaches 19; hepatitis claims 3 lives in Wadi

Nagpur: Even as swine flu continues to take toll on city and region, hepatitis outbreak in Wadi area, adjacent to city, is also killing patients. While the death toll due to swine flu has reached 19, hepatitis has claimed three persons.
Many citizens in Ambedkar Nagar in Wadi area are suffering from hepatitis E due to consumption of contaminated water. Since March 11, three persons, including a pregnant woman, have died due to hepatitis.

Twenty-six water samples from entire Wadi area have been found contaminated or non-potable. Total 46 samples were send for testing and results of 31 samples have been obtained so far.

Three patients died on March 11, March 19 and March 27. They are Mahesh Sadashiv Kude, age 32, Swati Vicky Gaikwad, age 25 and Moreshwar Ghodmare age 39. Of these, Swati was pregnant and died after delivery. Her twin babies also died after birth, however, it is unclear if they died due to hepatitis or not.

Dr Sonali Bansod told TOI that from March 13 onwards 26 blood samples have been tested and of these, seventeen have tested positive for hepatitis.

In all, a total of 36,739 persons were surveyed from 21,429 houses. It also includes 264 pregnant women.

The administration woke up when lot of high fever cases were reported from Ambedkar Nagar which is a slum area. Now, though there is not enough health staff available for surveillance or treatment, help of Asha workers is being sought to conduct door-to-door survey to identify any suspected cases.

Since Wadi is a municipal council and there is no primary health centre in the area, the authorities are taking help of the district health services.

Swine flu has taken life of six persons this month taking the toll to 19 since January 1, 2019. These include 13 deaths from Nagpur city alone. One death each has been reported from Bhandara and Chandrapur districts and three deaths were also reported from Amravati district.

So far 275 H1N1 positive cases have been reported since January. Of these, 118 cases have been reported this month. Progressive positive cases so far include 184 cases from city, two from district area under civil surgeon, 12 from Nagpur rural area, 21 from other districts in Nagpur circle which include five from Wardha, three from Gondia, four from Bhandara, three from Gadchiroli and six from Chandrapur districts.

From Akola heath circle, 25 positive cases were reported till March 28 and 29 positive cases have been reported from Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal. They took treatment in Nagpur.