If the mandarins of the State Health department and doctors of the SCB Medical College and Hospital here are allowed to have their way, then the State Health Minister Dr Damodar Rout would soon come out with a statement in his own inimitable style that not a single person suffered from dengue in the State this season.
This assumption apparently gained significance on Sunday when the Health department formed a five-member team of doctors on the day to ascertain the causes of death of those two persons who died in the SCB having dengue positive virus in their blood samples.
People here believe that the entire exercise of the Health department is aimed at upholding the continuous denial of the Health Minister that there has been no dengue death in the State this season. Despite the fact that at least four persons have died in Cuttack city alone due to dengue since last month, Rout continued to brush aside the fact.
In order to keep their political boss in good humour, the five-member team of doctors on Monday would examine the records of those deaths, including that of Bapi Behera of Jajpur district, who died on Friday night in the medicine ICU of the hospital. Behera, having been diagnosed to suffer from dengue was under treatment here for over ten days now.
Going by the audacity with which Rout is denying the dengue deaths in Cuttack city, it’s now a foregone conclusion what the findings of the expert team would be. “The patients having dengue positive are also suffering from malaria, multiple organ failure and other diseases. So how can we conclude that the two recent deaths in the hospital are due to dengue”, wondered SCB emergency officer BN Moharana on Sunday evening refusing to conform that the two deaths were caused due to dengue.
Under these circumstances, it would not be surprising if the Health Minister, a veterinary surgeon himself, would come out with a statement that under his tenure, he kept the Aedes mosquitoes at bay and nobody suffered from dengue in the State, not even in Cuttack city.