With health department reporting two cases of dengue on Saturday, the dreaded vector-brone disease has announced its arrival in the state for this season. The Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Dehradun, Dr S K Gupta confirmed that samples of two patients have been found positive for the disease in the Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay ( ELISA) test. The district vector borne diseases officer, Subhash Joshi informed that one patient belongs of Dhalwala area ( Near Rishikesh) of Tehri district while the other patient belongs to Haridwar. He claimed that both these patients are recuperating from the disease and are out of danger.
Meanwhile the health department has become alert on the dengue. The department has directed all medical practitioners to report the suspected cases of the disease to the district health department so that the ELISA test which is confirmatory test for the disease is conducted.
The CMO Dr Gupta said that there is no need of panic for the disease but advised people to ensure that breeding grounds inside and in the vicinity of their houses are destroyed. He added that teams of the department teams have been asked to visit the areas or pockets where chances of spread of the disease are more. The health department is claiming that it has adequate stocks of medicines and the ELISA kits.
What is dengue?
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 decrease 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 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.
