Despite the death of one girl from dengue at one of the private hospitals of the city, the medical health department is refusing to acknowledge that the girl died due to dengue.
The department is taking refuge in the fact that the CMI hospital where the girl died on Tuesday did not perform the Enzyme linked Immuno Sorbent Assay (ElISA) test on her.The doctors at the CMI hospital had said that the 12 year old girl was admitted in the hospital on October 20 and the rapid test showed that she was suffering from Dengue.
The doctors attending her informed that she was admitted in the isolation ward of the hospital and her platelet count decreased rapidly. The authorities at the CMI hospital said that they have informed the health department about the death of the girl.When contacted the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Dehradun, Dr S P Agarwal said that that as per the norm only ElISA test is considered as confirmatory test for dengue and this test was not performed on the girl who died. It is interesting to note that the medical health department considers only those ElISA positive cases which are done in laboratory of Doon hospital or Himalayan Institute and Hospital Trust (HIHT) Jolly Grant.
The death of the girl however created a flutter in the health department which was apparently on a sleeping mode on Dengue front. A team of heath department visited the house of the girl at Kanwali road on Wednesday and engaged intensive fogging of the locality. The District Vector Borne disease officer, J P Bahuguna told The Pioneer said that the department has collected blood samples of five family members of the girl for Dengue test. He said that the death of the girl from dengue would be confirmed only after ElISA test is performed on the blood sample. Bahuguna said that the sample of the girl from CMI hospital would be sent Doon hospital for ElISA test for confirmation of dengue.
The departmental data suggest that dengue was confirmed on only 86 patients in the district till date this year. It is worth mentioning here that in month of September the department drastically scaled down the figure of dengue patients on the plea that the some of the patients with positive rapid test were also included in the list erroneously.
Dengue is a viral infection spread by the mosquito Aedes Aezypti popularly known as Tiger Mosquito due to the characteristic strips over its body. 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