Chikungunya has claimed at least 15 lives this year. Even as the Delhi Government has notified chikungunya as a dangerous disease, doctors said the disease can trigger inflammatory cascade damaging healthy tissues and making immune system weak to fight against the diseases. Elderly people who died of the disease were found to be suffering with co-morbid condition such as kidney failure, brain and heart attack in chikungunya.
Doctors said chikungunya is not a life-threatening disease, but in rare cases leads to complications that prove fatal, especially in children and elderly persons.
Dr Anup Kumar, professor and HoD of urology and renal transplant at Safdarjung Hospital told The Pioneer, “Mostly, co-morbidity happens in the elderly people. How much severe is the pain in body, painkillers should not be given to the patient suffering from chikungunya associated with co-morbidity. These painkillers turn the cases complicated and fatal.”
In the wake of chikungunya epidemic, the Delhi Government has initiated the process for declaring chikungunya as a notifiable and dangerous disease.
A senior doctor criticised the Government for not announcing the disease a notifiable, before deaths were reported. “Was the Government waiting for deaths to happen like in dengueIJ” said a doctor.
Dr Atul Kakar, vice-chairman of Internal Medicine at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said, “Only in co-morbidity, there is a risk to life in chikungunya. Otherwise, patients only suffer fever and prolong joint pain. We have two patients between 50 and 60 years of age, who are suffering from renal diseases and chikungunya too.”
Strangely, a committee set up by the Delhi Government to look into recent deaths due to dengue and chikungunya claimed that there had been no confirmed mortalities due to either of the mosquito-borne diseases so far. The panel said only two deaths were reported due to dengue.