Detection of first case of dengue in the provisional State capital has sent the health department into a tizzy. The condition of the patient admitted in the AIIMS Rishikesh is said to be critical. The person, a resident of Khurbura area of the city, was admitted in one of a private hospitals based in Dehradun with high fever. On the basis of the symptoms of the disease, the doctors advised for Enzyme linked Immuno Sorbent Assay (ElISA) test which proved positive. After which the health authorities swung to action. Teams of the department were rushed to the area where the patient resided and door to door survey was conducted to detect patients suffering from fever. The chief medical officer (CMO) Dehradun Dr S K Gupta told The Pioneer that no person with symptoms of the disease has been detected. “We, however, followed the protocol which included fogging in the entire area for control of the vector-borne disease,’’ he said.
The CMO further claimed that the department is in a state of alert to take on the dreaded disease. He said that teams of the health department are undertaking a door to door survey in different parts of the district. These workers are informing the people about the preventive measures to be taken for checking the spread of the disease, he claimed. “We are going all-out to prevent the disease from afflicting any one. We are alert and at the same time, the people must also be alert,” he said.
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.
In the year 2017 a total of 198 cases of the disease were reported from Dehradun district while in the year 2016, 1428 patients of the dengue were reported.