Embarrassed on the exposure of fudging of dengue data by it, a red faced health department corrected its mistake on Saturday as it released the data of the disease by adding the positive dengue cases of other government hospitals of the district. The department which till yesterday was claiming that there are only 883 patients of the disease, made complete somersault on Saturday and confirmed that so far 1788 patients have been found positive for the disease in Dehradun. The Pioneer in its edition of September 14 had reported that the health department is only reporting the dengue positive cases reported by the lab of Government Doon Medical College (GDMC) hospital and not adding the patients found positive for the disease at the labs of Coronation, Gandhi and other government hospitals.
The Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Dehradun, Dr S K Gupta said that 909 dengue positive cases have been reported by the GDMC hospital lab. Here 7794 samples have so far been tested for the disease. Similarly 392 and 364 cases have been reported respectively by the labs of Coronation hospital and Gandhi centenary eye hospital. Apart from them, 123 cases of the disease have also been reported by the SPS hospital, Rishikesh. The CMO further added that so far four patients of the disease have died in the district. On the deaths of four patients reported from different hospitals of district on Friday, the CMO said that the department is conducting a death audit of these deaths. Meanwhile agitated by the increasing number of dengue patients, the members of Congress party’s labour cell held a protest at the office of the Medical Superintendent (MS) of the GDMC Hospital.
Dengue
Dengue is a viral disease spread by the Aedes mosquito- also called Tiger mosquito- which is the vector of the disease. This mosquito bites during day time so it is advisable that everyone should wear full sleeve clothes to reduce exposure of their body for the mosquito to bite. The symptoms of Dengue are persistently high fever, rashes, headache and pain in the joints. In the acute cases the platelets number decrease drastically which could prove fatal for the patient.
Politics galore over Dengue
The ever escalating menace of dengue in provisional state capital Dehradun is now becoming the weapon of political attacks and counter attacks in Uttarakhand. In response to the statement of the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief, Pritam Singh in which he had said that the dengue infected mosquito is roaming around the state government, the chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat said on Saturday that the mosquito is buzzing around Pritam Singh which is the reason why he is not able to constitute of his team of PCC. The CM however added that Pritam Singh is a very good person and suggested that there should be no politics on dengue. He was responding to the questions of media persons at Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya (Coronation) hospital on Saturday. He visited the hospital as part of the ‘ Service Week’ being organised to celebrate the birthday of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The CM met the patients in the hospital and distributed fruits to them.
Meanwhile, the Congress lost no time in retaliating on the barb of CM. The Vice president of the Uttarakhand Congress Surya Kant Dhasmana said that the CM should not make such statements for the President of the opposition party