Irrespective of the scanty rainfall, the national Capital saw its first casualty because of dengue on Saturday. An eight-year-old Kashmiri child died of the disease at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.
According to hospital authorities, Rishi Qaddafi was brought in after suspected dengue on September 28. “After going through several tests, doctors diagnosed the child with dengue and also confirmed that he was suffering from leukaemia,” said Ajoy Sehgal, spokesperson of the hospital.After diagnosis, the boy was under constant watch and was being given all the necessary treatment. However, doctors said that the dengue made the boy too weak leading to his death. Rishi died on late Friday evening.
“In this case, the child was already suffering from leukaemia (blood cancer) and had developed dengue,” said Dr Dhiren Gupta, senior consultant, paediatric intensive care and paediatric pulmonology.
“Dengue this year is not too prevalent. For the past one week, I have been seeing one or two cases of dengue per week, which are non-serious. But in this particular case, because of leukaemia, the disease showed severe manifestations,” said Dr Gupta.
This is the first casualty of dengue to have been reported in the city this year. As per the last available statistics given out by the Delhi municipal corporation, a total of 98 cases had been reported in Delhi till September 27, while the figure stood at 75 till September 20. However, while the North Corporation reported the maximum cases until two weeks back, South seems to have suddenly seen a spurt of cases being reported. Almost 39 cases had been reported from South while North reported 18 and East reported 13.
According to a report released by North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NMC) around the same time, dengue mosquitoes had been found breeding at various institutions this year, including six cases reported at lok Nayak Hospital and three at the headquarters of NMC itself.
The Delhi Development Authority (DDA), Delhi Technical University and DTC depot were among several institutions in the Capital to be penalised for failing to check breeding of dengue mosquitoes on their premises.
Delhi witnessed a large number of dengue cases in 2010 with over 6,200 cases. In 2009, 1,153 cases were registered, over 1,300 cases in 2008, 1,131 cases in 2011 and 2,093 cases in 2012. The decline in the number of cases this year has been attributed to delayed rains and preventive drive undertaken by the civic bodies much before the onset of monsoon.
Civic bodies are continuing with preventive measures like fumigation, checking of breeding areas and awareness campaigns to control dengue menace. According to the report, 1,33,728 households were found positive for mosquito breeding while legal notices were served to over 97,340 for mosquitogenic conditions. Over 10,152 prosecutions were also launched during the same period.