The outbreak of Chickungunya in the National Capital Region (NCR) has forced the Uttarakhand health department to issue an alert for the disease in the State. The national Capital is witnessing an unprecedented surge in the number of Chickungunya cases since last few days.
The number of patients affected with this viral disease has jumped to 1724 in Delhi with a few deaths reported.
Taking a serious note of increase in Chickungunya cases in national Capital, the State health department is fighting a grim battle on dengue fronts in Dehradun and Haridwar districts, has issued an alert. Issuing the alert, the Director General (DG) of state health services, Dr Kusum Narriyal has asked the Chief Medical Officers (CMO) of all districts to keep additional precautions to prevent the disease from spreading in the state.
The concern of the health department on Chickungunya is genuine as large number of people from national capital visit the state especially Dehradun. Interestingly in symptoms and epidemiology Chickungunya and Dengue are almost similar and some of the doctors of state capital admit that the disease is already here. “In many cases ElISA test of the patients with dengue like symptoms proves negative some of these patients even need transfusion of platelets. These patients are actually Chickungunya patients,’’ confided one of a doctors.
like Dengue the virus of Chickungunya is spread by Aedes mosquito. The symptoms of the disease are fever and joint pain. The other symptoms include headache, muscle pain, joint swelling and rashes.
The senior Physician at associated Doon Medical College here, Dr Praveen Panwar admitted that it is difficult to distinguish between Dengue and Chickungunya. “Symptomatically we try to distinguish the disease by viewing the rashes which are more in patients of Chickungunya. The RT- PCR test is used to identity Chickungunya,’’ he said.
Dr Panwar further informed that the treatment of Dengue and Chickungunya are same with objective to control fever.
The patients should not take any pain killer, drink plenty of water and take adequate rest. Chickungunya fever is not hemorrhagic like dengue and mortality rate in the disease is much less. like Dengue, use of mosquito repellents, nets and destruction of breeding ground of mosquitoes are recommended as measures to combat the disease.